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THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 




IN A SPECIAL BUILDING WAS A MODEL OF A FAMOUS WHALER 



THE BOYS' BOOK 
OF WHALERS 



By 
A. HYATT VERRILL 

Author of " Radio for Amateurs " "An American 
Crusoe,'^ " The Real Story of the Whaler,'' etc. 



WltH ILLUSTRATIONS BT THE AUTHOR 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1922 






COPYBIQHT, 1923 

By dodd, mead and company, Ino. 



SEP 13 '22 

)CI.A683i85 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FAaE 

In a special building was a model of a 

famous whaler .... Frontispiece 

Wiieu the whale is at last alongside the dirtiest 

and hardest work of all begins ... 30 

Before long the last old Yankee whale ship will 

be but a memory of the past ... 30 

Her dingy patched sails were bellying out like 

dan-colored balloons 52 

These boats are the most seaworthy and safest 

small boats which were ever designed or built 52 

Explanation — Kinds of whales, symbols, etc. . 88 

Explanation — Implements and weapons used in 

whaling 138 

The reason for the decline of the whaling in- 
dustry was the drop in prices of whalebone 
and whale oil 198 

They had been through three winters in the arctic 

to secure the full cargo of oil . . . 198 



THE BOYS' BOOK 
OF WHALERS 



CHAPTER I 

'"T^HAT'S the queerest looking craft I've ever 
-■- seen," declared Harry Bennet as he 
turned from a long survey of the strange vessel 
on the horizon ahead. 

The yacht, on which Harry was cruising, was 
tacldng across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay and 
the ship which had attracted his attention was 
coming out of the Bay before the brisk northerly 
wind. Her dingy patched sails were bellying out 
like dun-colored balloons; a little mountain of 
white water was about her high, bluff bows and 
her lofty sides towered, like the walls of a house, 
far above the green waves. Her low, stout masts, 
immensely long and heavy spars, uptilted bow- 
sprit and ornate figure-head gave her a very 
ancient appearance, and through his glasses, 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

Harry had noticed that her davits were crude 
wooden affairs, and that there were numerous 
boats swinging from them. 

At Harry's words, the sailing-master, — ^an old 
salt from Cape Cod, — ^turned and squinted at the 
vessel. ''Aye, I reckon ye ain't seed many o' sech 
craft," he remarked. " Yonder's a whaler, — reg'- 
lar old timer too. New Bedford ship. I ain't 
seed none o' her kind fer nigh twenty year. 
Reckon the war's made ile go so sky-high they're 
a-fittin' out o' all the ol' hookers." 

"A whaler ! " exclaimed Harry. " Why, I 
thought whaling was a thing of the past, — ^that 
is, in these waters. Of course I knew the Scotch 
had steam whaling ships in the Arctic and that 
on our Pacific coast they killed whales with guns 
and towed them to refineries by tugboats. Say, 
Captain, run over near so we can have a good 
look at her. My, but she's a funny old tub ! " 

Shifting the helm a point or two, Captain I^ed 
eased off the yacht's sheets and the little yawl 
tore through the water towards the bark. 

Presently, they were within hailing distance 
and Harry noted with interest the details of the 
whaling ship. She was bark-rigged, but short 

2 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and tubby and seemed to liave a deck cluttered 
and littered witli all sorts of odds and ends, while 
the crew, or at least those who stared curiously 
at the passing yacht, looked far more like a 
crowd of tramps and gutter snipes than like 
sailors. 

By now, Harry's father, and his cousin Bob, 
had come from below and all three watched the 
old bark as she bobbed and plunged along on her 
course. 

Caj)tain Ned hailed her through a megaphone, 
asking her name and where bound, and a tall, 
lanky man, with ragged beard and a stiff Derby 
hat, sprang to the taffrail and shouted : " Bark 
Betsey, New Bedford. Western Ocean and South 
Seas. Three years." ^ 

" Gosh ! Does he mean they're to be gone 
three years? " exclaimed Bob. 

" I expect he does," replied his uncle. " Whal- 
ing cruises often last three or four years." 

" "What are all those boats for and what's that 
big gangway in her side? " inquired Harry. 

" The boats are whaleboats, — used In captur- 
ing whales and the gang-way is where they cut 
in the blubber on the grounds." 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" On the *■ grounds/ " repeated Harry. " I 
didn't know tliey caught whales from shore." 

Mr. Bennet laughed and Captain Ned gave a 
loud guffaw. 

" ' Grounds ' in whalemen's parlance means 
those parts of the sea where whales are liable to 
be found," explained his father. " But if you 
are interested in whaling, ask Captain Ned about 
it," he continued. " I laiow very little myself." 

" Reckon I can't tell ye much," declared the 
Captain when the boys turned to him for further 
information. " All I knows is what I I'arned 
knockin' around New Bedford an' Nantucket. 
We're boun' fer New Bedford an' that's the spot 
fer ye to I'arn all about whales an' whalin'. 
They've got a museum there, — Old Dartmouth 
Historical S'ciety, I b'lieve they calls it, — ^what's 
chock-a-block with whalin' gear an' ye'U find a 
heap o' ol' whalemen at the Seamen's Home an' 
knockin' about town. They'll jes' enjiy spinnin' 
yarns fer ye." 

*' Well, I'm going there," declared Harry. " I 
mean to find out all there is to know about those 
ships and how they catch whales. Somehow, 
just thinking of that old bark going off for three 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEBS 

years gave me a sort of thrill. I'll bet they have 
some adventures on their cruises." 

" Beckon they do,'^ agreed old Ned. " Ye'll 
find records o' a heap o' mutinies an' pirates an' 
wracks an' being stove in an' sech, over to the! 
museum." 

" I'll bet you could tell us some of those too," 
declared Bob. "Nov;^, Cap'n Ned, be a good 
sport and tell us some whaling stories. We 
won't be in New Bedford for hours and there's 
nothing else to amuse us." 

" Wall," replied the old sailor with a grin, " I 
'spect I won't get no rest 'til I does, so I might 
jes' as well. But I ain't no whaleman, an' as I 
said afore, I don't know much about the game. 
When I was a kid, old New Bedford was jes' a 
whalin' town and not much else. Why, I 
recollec' the time when Merrill's wharf was that 
full o' bar'ls o' ile ye couldn' hardly see the 
mas'heads o' the ships 'longside. An' ships! — 
why, boys, I'm a-tellin' o' the Gospel truth when 
I says I've counted of nigh a hundred ships 'long- 
side that ol' dock, an' all square-riggers too. 
Nowadays, 'less times have changed a lot sence 
I was here last, ye can't find a dozen altogether, 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

an' them jes' o'nary Portugee schooners. But ye 

was askin' me fer to spin ye a yarn. Well, I 

reckon 'bout the bes' yarn I ever heard 'bout the 

whalers was 'bout a niut'ny aboard o' a Portugee 

schooner, the Pedro Yarela, — like as not ye'll see 

her 'longside the docks to New Bedford — ^what 

was about the funniest sort o' mut'ny ever I 

heard on. 'Cordin' to the yarn, the Yarela sailed 

with about as rotten a crew o' scallywags as ye 

could find an' 'bout six months arter they'd 

sailed all hands was jes' dog-tired o' whalin' an' 

pinin' for home an' the slums. Not bein' proper 

sailormen, an' a passel o' cowards, th^y didn't 

dare kill none o' the officers, but jes' decided to 

fix things so's the v'yage would have to end. 

Every night, the rascals on watch would heave 

overboard everything they could sot ban's on. 

First thing 'twas the handspikes to the vdn'- 

lass; nex', the blubber-tackles an' carp'nter's 

tools; then the harpoons an' lances, 'til purty 

soon, there weren't nary a bit o' gear left. Even 

the grin'stone went, an' afore they Imowed it, 

the cap'n found that even if they did raise a 

whale 'twouldn't do 'em a mite o' good cause they 

couldn't catch it. Course the skipper swore and 

6 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERB 

threatened, but lie might jes' as well saved his 
breath, 'cause nothln' he nor the crew could do'd 
bring the gear back from the bottom o' the sea. 
Fin'ly, seein' as how 'twasn't a mite o' use, the 
skipper claps the whole bunch in irons and sails 
off to the Azores. Jes' as luck would have it, 
a Yankee man-o'-war was in port an' the skipper 
o' the Varela turns his mut'neers over to the 
cruiser. Well, the long an' the short o' the mat- 
ter was, that the gang was brought back to the 
States an' tried fer mut'ny, an' thet's where the 
funny part comes in. The jedge jes' couldn't 
convict 'em, 'cause 'cordin' to law, they hadn't 
committed no mut'ny. Hadn't refused to obey 
orders nor threatened nor attacked an offiLcer, 
an' nary a officer could prove the crew had 
throwed the gear over the side. So all the Court 
done was to give 'em each ten days in jail fer a 
bit o' justice." 

Both boys were highly amused at this story of 
a novel mutiny and begged the sailing-master for 
another yarn, until after a bit, he related the 
story of Marshall Jenkins, which is one of the 
most amazing adventures ever recorded in the 
annals of whaling. 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

" This 'ere yarn was tol' to me by a ol' whaling 
cap'n who swore 'twas true," announced Captain 
Ned. "An' I reckon 'twas, 'cause I've met a lot 
o' chaps since what's heard the yarn an' one lad 
said he'd seen a ol' log in the museum with the 
same yarn in it. Well, 'cordin' to the story, 
long back in '70 this chap Jenkins went in on a 
sparm whale an' made a good strike with his 
iron, — that's the har-poon, ye know — ^but 'stead o' 
tearin' off with the boat in tow like they gen'rally 
does, this 'ere ol' whale jes' nat'rally got rip- 
roarin' mad, and turnin' round, snapped the boat 
in two, and grabbin' Jenkins in his jaws dove 
down to the bottom o' the sea, — ' sounded,' — as 
the whalers say. Well, o' course his mates all 
thought Jenkins was gone to Davy Jones' locker 
all right, an' they dumb up on the two halves o' 
their boat a-waitin' for their ship to pick 'em 
up. They hadn't been there more'n a minute 
when up comes Mr. Whale right 'loiigside and 
spits Jenkins out an' plumb into the fore part o' 
the broken boat. An', by crickety, that chap 
weren't none the worse, 'ceptin' for a few bruises, 
and was back to whalin' again inside a f ortni't ! " 

" My, that is a whopper ! " exclaimed Harry. 
8 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

'* You don't mean to say you expect us to believe 
that, do you? " 

" It's quite true," declared Mr. Bennet, who 
had been listening to old Ned's story. " I saw 
the account of the marvelous incident in the 
original log. But here's New Bedford ahead, 
boys." 



CHAPTER II 

ALMOST tlie first thing that the boys did, 
after arriving in New Bedford, was to hunt 
up the Old Dartmouth Historical Society and 
its wonderful museum of whales and whalers. 
Here they found themselves in a new world and 
in the midst of most interesting and fascinating 
objects of which they had never dreamed. Here, 
in a special building, was a model of a famous 
whaler, complete in every detail and just one- 
half, natural size. In another room was a whale- 
boat with all its gear just as it would be when 
the hardy whalemen were about to go after a 
whale. In cases and on shelves were a thousand 
and one objects used by whalers ; models of their 
boats and appliances, ornaments and curios 
brought by them from far distant lands; handi- 
work of the men; harpoons, lances and other 
weapons; relics of famous ships; old logbooks 
and records, and paintings and pictures galore. 
It was all so wonderful and so confusing that, as 

Harry put it, the only way was to begin at the be- 

10 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

ginning. But tlien the question arose as to what 
and where the beginning was. Bob suggested 
that they begin with the oldest specimens, and 
while they were discussing this matter the genial 
curator approached and intxuired if he could be 
of any service. 

The boys at once told of their newly-aroused 
interests in whaling and their desire to learn all 
that they could of the industry while they were 
in New Bedford. 

" There's an immense amount of detail to 
learn," said the curator. " But it's all very in- 
teresting and mighty important as well, although 
ninety people out of one hundred would not 
think so, and haven't the least idea that whaling, 
— if, in fact, they ever heard of it, — has any bear- 
ing on the history or progress of the United 
States. But, as a matter of fact, whaling has 
had a tremendous influence on our history, our 
commerce and our country." 

" Well, we would like to begin at the very be- 
ginning and learn all we can," Harry assured 
him. " From what we've seen here we know it 
must be just full of interest, and we'd love to look 

over the old logs and read about the adventures 

11 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie men had. Our sailing-master told us one or 
two stories he'd heard, and if they're all as good 
as those the logs must be as exciting as any 
book." 

" I'll be very glad to tell you everything I can, 
and you're welcome to read the logs and old 
papers," replied the curator. " But if you want 
to start at the very beginning, and won't be 
bored, I'll first give you an outline of the early 
days of whaling and what it meant to the United 
States." 

Assuring their new-found friend that nothing 
would please them more, the boys seated them- 
selves at the curator's request and listened at- 
tentively to his story of the whalers. 

" We owe the whalers a great deal," he began, 
" although few people realize the fact any more 
than they realize what a prominent part they 
took in the history and prosperity of the United 
States, the riches they brought or what an im- 
portant part they played in the exploration, civ- 
ilization and trade of the world. A whale ship 
was the first vessel to carry the Stars and Stripes 
into a British port, and the first time our flag 

was ever seen on the western coast of South 

12 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

Aanerica was when it was flown from a whaling 
ship's masthead. Long before any merchant 
ship or man-o'-war had carried Old Glory to far 
distant lands the flag was known to the natives 
through seeing it flaunted by the New England 
whalers. In many an unknown and uncharted 
island the savages first saw white men when a 
Nantucket or New Bedford whaler dropped an- 
chor off their shores. 

"Almost fifty years before the famous ride of 
Paul Kevere the New England whalemen had ex- 
plored and navigated Davis Straits, and within 
a dozen years after the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, a Nantucket whaling ship, — the Penelope 
— had ciniised farther north than was reached 
by any vessel for a hundred years thereafter. 
Years before Perry had opened Japan to the 
commerce of the world, whaling vessels had vis- 
ited its shores and one whaleman had lived in 
Japan and had taught the natives English. 

" It was Captain Folger, a Nantucket whale- 
man, who first discovered the flow and direction 
of the Gulf Stream, and it was from his rude 
sketches that Benjamin Franklin had a map 

made, — a map which revolutionized the commerce 

13 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

between Eiiroije and America forever after. 
Brave to recklessness, accustomed daily to tak- 
ing most fearful risks and to fighting against the 
mightiest creature in the world, splendid seamen 
and loving danger, the whalers often performed 
most marvelous feats of heroism and bravery for 
which they got no credit. It was the crews of 
two whaling vessels, from this little town of New 
Bedford, who saved the garrison of San Jos6, 
California, in 1846. When the government 
buildings at Honolulu were burned it was whale- 
men who saved the town, and whenever a war 
broke out the stout-hearted, sturdy whalers were 
always prom]3t to enlist, and much of our success 
in famous old naval battles was due to the whale- 
men serving on American ships. 

" I wish I could honestly tell you that all the 
whalemen were brave, noble-hearted, patriotic 
and honest men, but unfortunately there were all 
sorts and conditions of men among them as in 
every other trade or profession. Many of them 
were utterly mercenary and would undertake 
anything or commit any act no matter how 
brutal, dishonest or abominable it might be for 
the sake of money to be gained, and they drew 

14 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie line at actual piracy only through fear of 

the consequences should their acts become 

knoTm. As long as whales were to be had they 

usually stuck to whaling, as it was the trade they 

knew best and was the safest and surest in the 

end. But many of them saw far larger profits 

in less legitimate enterprises and chief among 

these was slaving. No one will ever know how 

many poor, miserable blacks were transported 

from Africa to be sold as slaves in the West 

Indies and South America on the oil-soaked, 

stinking whale ships. But it is certain, and a 

well-known historical fact, that many a New 

Bedford and New England fortune was made on 

the profits of slaving, although those who made 

the money were ostensibly whalers. It was a 

very easy matter for a whaler to start on a 

cruise, visit the African coast, carry a cargo of 

•^ black ivory,' as the slaves were called, to the 

West Indies and then, after cruising on the 

whaling grounds, return with a cargo of oil. In 

the earlier days when slavery was recognized by 

nearly all nations this was of course looked 

upon as a perfectly honorable way of adding to 

a ship's profits and in later years, :when slavery 

15 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

still existed but the exportation of slaves from 
Africa had been abolished or rather forbidden, it 
was still a most diflicult and well-nigh impos- 
sible matter to prove that a whale ship had en- 
gaged in * blackbirding ' as it was called. 
The men, if they told, would not be believed 
and if they were it meant they would be held, 
if not as accessories as witnesses, and the class 
of men who shipped on whale ships had no desire 
to be held by the law even as witnesses and of 
course the whalemen never told of their own 
deeds when sober. 

" Of all the slave ships the whalers were the 
worst and the conditions under which the 
negroes were brought across the sea were ap- 
palling and almost incredible. The real slavers 
were fast ships, their holds, though dark, ill 
ventilated or not ventilated at all, were at least 
roomy, their only cargo was slaves and the ras- 
cals who operated them had had experience in 
carrying slaves and to a certain extent knew 
how to care for them. 

" Of course the agonies the poor blacks en- 
dured were awful. They were shackled in the 

foul hold with no sanitary arrangements, they 

16 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALER^ 

were deatlily sick, they were ill fed, they were 
sometimes kept below decks for days at a time 
if tlie weather were bad and if they sickened they 
were often tossed overboard to save the trouble 
of doctoring them or to avoid the spread of dis- 
ease. But after all, it was to the slavers' inter- 
ests to make the quickest possible runs. Every 
slave lost was so much money from their pockets 
and the more slaves they could bring to market 
and the better the condition in which they ar- 
rived the more they could demand for them. As 
a result, these true slavers did all they could, or 
knew how, to keep their human freight alive and 
in fairly good shape until the slave markets of 
Cuba and the West Indies were reached. Then, 
when the British and other nations proclaimed 
the slave trade illegal and proceeded to capture 
and sink every slaver they found these men were 
largely forced out of their nefarious trade. A 
pure out and out slaver was easily recognized 
and even if, as often happened, they were 
searched and no slaves found upon them, they 
were liable to seizure under suspicion. But with 
the whalers, conditions were very different and 

far worse. These ships were slow — they were 

X7 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALEES 

built for seaworthiness and not speed, their holds 
reeked with whale oil, they were filled with casks 
and supplies for whaling, their officers knew 
nothing of handling slaves and as it was a side 
venture the captains and their crews looked 
upon it as a sort of gamble and cared very little 
whether or not they got their black ivory into 
port alive or in what condition. As a result, 
the miserable blacks that fell to the lot of a 
whaler slaver were lucky when they died. They 
were thrown into the reeking hold, packed in like 
sardines, shackled and uncared for. Only 
barely enough rotten water and wormy, mouldy 
food was given them to maintain life and each 
day all those who were too ill, weak or exhausted 
to stand were thrown to the sharks like so much 
garbage. If one-tenth of the original number 
of slaves survived the long passage the whale- 
men were satisfied, for the profits, especially 
after the trade was forbidden, were enormous. 
And if conditions were such when all went well, 
imagine what it was when a whaler engaged in 
the illicit trade was sighted by a man-of-war 
and was chased. Then the only way to save 
themselves was to leave no evidence on board 

i8 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

and liurriedly tlie trembling, shuddering, moan- 
ing blacks were routed up, shackled together 
with heavy chains and thrown into the sea in 
groups. By the time the corvette arrived and 
the whale ship hove-to no evidence was there to 
prove slaves had ever been carried, and as a 
whaler might be anywhere on legitimate busi- 
ness and as there were always casks, gear and 
usually some oil aboard it was almost impossible 
to prove a case. As a result, nine-tenths of the 
whale ships that engaged in slaving went free, but 
many were taken, the captains and officers con- 
victed and sentenced and the ships confiscated. 
It is one of the blackest pages in the history of 
New England and the worst of it is that it did 
not cease even when the hue and cry to abolish 
slavery in our Southern States went up. Even 
while our Northern people were rabidly denounc- 
ing slavery and ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' was inflam- 
ing the minds of New Englanders with the hor- 
rors of slavery, money contributed to the cause 
was being earned through transporting slaves on 
New England ships. Many a righteous deacon 
who publicly decried the sins and disgraces of 

our Southern planters for holding slaves was 

J9 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

pocketing his share of the profits from running 
a cargo of blaclt ivory into some South American 
port, and many a puritanical old New England 
family was being supported by the same nefari- 
ous business. No doubt many of the members of 
the whalemen's families were quite blameless and 
innocent of the source of the money they spent, 
for it is not likely that even the most calloused 
and hardened old reprobate of a whaler confided 
the secret of his successful and profitable voy- 
ages to his wife and family or even to his cronies, 
but nevertheless it was on the whole an open 
secret and many a whaleman boasted of his es- 
cape from men-o'-war and of getting slave car- 
goes into port. 

" I do not know if any one can say when the 
last whaler carried a cargo of slaves, but that it 
continued to be a lucrative and not uncommon 
venture up to the time of the Civil War is easily 
proven. In the New Bedford Shipping List of 
December 3rd, 1861, appears the following : 

" ' SENTENCE OF SAMUEL P. SKINNER 
" ' In the U. S. Court in Boston on Friday, 

Judge Clifford sentenced Samuel P, Skinner, 

SO 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

convicted of fitting out the Barque Margaret 
Scott of New Bedford for the slave trade, to pay 
a fine of one thousand dollars and to be confined 
at hard labor for a term of five years in the jail 
at Taunton.' 

" In that same year another ship — the Brutus 
of New Bedford, fitted for a slave voyage and 
was successful in putting a cargo of 650 negroes 
ashore in Cuba. However, we may be thankful 
that her owners did not escape scot free, for one 
was convicted and sentenced to several years' 
imprisonment and the others were fined heavily. 
By that time, of course, every effort was being 
made to suppress the trade and scores of seized 
whaling ships were moored in Boston and other 
ports. And as a most fitting end to the careers 
of these ships and as a just retribution, the con- 
demned vessels were loaded with stone, sent 
south and were sunk to blockade the Confederate 
ports. 

" But I am getting a bit ahead of the begin- 
ning of whaling. Whaling began almost with 
the landing of the Pilgrims and Cape Cod was 
settled principally because whales were common 

in its waters. By 1639 one of the most impor- 

21 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tant revenues of Massachusetts was from whal- 
ing, and Avitliin the next two years Long Island 
had been settled by whalers. The industry was 
so important to the colony that the town of 
Southampton was divided into four wards of 
eleven people each whose sole duty it was to se- 
cure and cut up the whales that came ashore. 
But at that time no whaling had been done from 
ships, all the whales being captured close to 
shore by means of small boats. In fact, it was 
not until 1688 that the first whaling ship, the 
brigantine Happy Return, sailed from Boston 
for the Bahamas and Florida on a search for 
sperm whales. But within a dozen years a fleet 
of hundreds of barks, brigs, schooners and sloops 
were engaged in the business and were scattered 
over the seven seas. As a result, many of the 
little coast towns and villages of New England 
were famous throughout the world, and in many 
a far-distant land, and to many a savage or 
strange race, the names of New Bedford, Gay 
Head, Nantucket, New London or Sag Harbor 
were more familiar than New York or Boston. 
" But of all these ports New Bedford was the 

most famous as headquarters for the whalemen, 

22 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and the town was practically built up and devel- 
oped througli Avhaling and the industries depend- 
ent upon it. 

"And now, boys, before I begin to describe the 
whaling ships and the lives of the whalers, you 
must learn something about the various kinds of 
whales and their ways, for there were a great 
many different kinds of whaling, and for each 
sort of whale the methods, implements and weap- 
ons were specially designed. 

" Perhaps you may think of whales as fish, and 
many old sailors and whalemen speak of them as 
such ; but in reality whales, as well as their rela- 
tives the porpoises, dolphins and grampus, are 
warm-blooded mammals which bring forth their 
young alive and suckle them like any four-footed 
land mammal. Moreover, they breathe air and 
possess lungs and are obliged to rise frequently 
to the surface of the sea to ' spout ' or * blow ' 
and it is their exhaled breath which forms the 
little puff of vapor which betrays the presence of 
whales to the whalemen. In fact, the ancestors 
of whales actually lived upon the land and the 
so-called ' fins ' are really flippers or front legs 

adapted to a life in the sea, while the hind legs 

23 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

have been gradually lost, until now tlie only 
trace wliich. remains are small bones completely 
hidden under the flesh. 

" While there are a great many kinds of 
whales, only a few were hunted by the old New 
England whalemen, although nowadays, steam 
whaling ships, harpoon-guns and bomb-lances 
have made possible the capture of many kinds of 
whales which the old-time whalers did not con- 
sider worth while. The most important whales, 
to the New England whalemen, were the sperm 
whalesj howheads and right whales^ but they 
also took the finbacks, humpbacks and sulphur- 
bottom whales, and when nothing else was avail- 
able, they captured grampuses, porpoises, white 
whales and the narwhal or unicorn whale. Very 
often, too, they visited the remote islands of the 
Antarctic and South Indian Oceans and cap- 
tured sea-elephants. 

" Of all the whales the sperm whale and 
right whale were the most hunted as they were 
the most valuable ; the sperm whale for its blub- 
ber, oil and the waxlike oily substance called 
' spermaceti ' contained in a cavity of the head, 

while the right whale provided oil and whale- 

24 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

bone. Sperm whales are denizens of temperate 
and tropical seas, while the right whales and 
bowheads live in the Arctic and Antarctic 
waters, and while the two latter are really dis- 
tinct, they are so much alike that a description 
of one will do for both. Although the oil of 
these whales was never as valuable as that of the 
sperm whales, yet the * bone ' or baleen was for- 
merly about the most valuable of whaling prod- 
ucts, and as a result the right whale and bow- 
head fisheries were among the largest and most 
important of the whaling industry. To the ordi- 
nary person, the most noticeable difference be- 
tween the right whales and bowheads and the 
sperm whales is that the sperm whale has an 
enormous, square-ended head with the mouth 
near the lower side, while the bowheads and 
right whales have rounded heads with the mouth 
near the top. But really the greatest difference 
lies in the jaws and the manner of feeding. The 
lower jaw of the sperm whale is long, slender 
and pointed and is armed with many huge, 
sharp-pointed and strong teeth, — as you will see 
by examining the jaws in the other room, — 

whereas the right whales and bowheads, and, in 

25 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

fact, all other whales, possess no teeth, but have 
a curious horn-like material growing from the 
upper jaw in the form of a thick fringe. This is 
the so-called '^ bone ' and serves the whales as a 
strainer, for these creatures live upon tiny ma- 
rine animals which they capture by filling their 
mouths with water and then closing their jaws 
and forcing the water out through the *bone,' 
leaving all the small creatures that were in the 
water in the whale's mouth. The sperm whale, 
on the other hand, dives to the bottom of the sea 
and lives upon cuttlefish or squids which he 
bites to pieces with his sharp teeth. This differ- 
ence in habits and structure of jaws makes a vast 
difference in the way the several varieties of 
whales were hunted. Thus, the right whales and 
bowheads cannot see ahead and cannot defend 
themselves with their jaws, while the sperm 
whales cannot see backwards and can easily bite 
a whaleboat in two with their powerful, armed 
jaws. Both kinds, however, can strike with 
their tails or flukes and do tremendous damage, 
although the right whale's tail is the far more 
dangerous of the two and can be swung from eye 

to eye. ' Beware of a right whale's flulvcs and a 

26 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

sperm whale's jaw/ is an old wlialemen's maxim, 
and in hunting them the whalers were always 
careful to approach the sperm whale from the 
rear and the right whales and bowheads from in 
front. 

"And just as there was a great deal of differ- 
ence in the way that sperm whales and right 
whales were captured so, too, the methods used 
in cutting or stripping off the blubber or 'cut- 
ting in,' as it is called, varied according to the 
kind of whale. 

" If you will go to the docks and examine any 
of the whale ships, or if you look at the model 
here in the museum, you will see a broad opening 
or gangway on the starboard side of every whal- 
ing vessel. This is the cutting-in gangway, and 
when a whale is alongside a ship a light, flimsy 
platform, Imown as the * cutting stage,' is swung 
out from the ship's side below this gangway. 
The men standing on this cut the blubber or fat 
from the whale's carcass by means of sharp- 
edged ' spades ' on long handles. As soon as the 
whale ' spouted blood ' or was killed, a chain was 
passed around its flukes, or tail, and it was 

towed to the ship. But you must not think for a 

27 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

moment tliat it was an easy job to do this. In 
fact, it was an undertaking of tremendous risk 
and danger, except in the smoothest weather. 
Very often night fell before the whale was killed, 
and still oftener, the seas ran high and the wind 
blew half a gale. Then, with the huge dead whale 
wallowing in the sea and as dangerous to the 
tiny boats as an island, the whalemen required 
all their skill and courage and strength to get 
the towing-chain about the root or 'small' of 
the huge tail or flukes. If two or more boats 
were at hand it was not so bad, for by passing a 
light, weighted line under the flukes, and then 
drawing a heavier rope and finally a chain, by 
this, the operation could be accomplished with- 
out much danger, but if only one boat was pres- 
ent, — as was more often the case, — the difficulties 
to be overcome were almost incredible. Only by 
a man standing on, or holding to, the dead whale 
was it possible to pass the rope and chain under 
and around the whale's flukes. Secured by a 
rope about his waist, one of the daring men 
would climb upon the slippery whale and, while 
alternately buried in the tumbling seas and 

forced to cling for his life to the whale, he would 

28 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

finally get the line in place. Very often, too, the 
whale would be killed miles away from the ship, 
and after a hard day's work, the men would be 
obliged to tow the mountain of flesh and blubber 
through a rough sea and against a head wind for 
hours. 

" Then, when it is at last alongside, the dirti- 
est and hardest work of all begins. First a hole 
is cut through the blubber between the eye and 
the fin, and in this a huge hook is placed which 
is attached to a heavy tackle led from the ship's 
mast. Then cuts are made through the blubber 
at each side with a cross-cut connecting them, 
and by hoisting away on the hook the strip 
of blubber is stri^Dped from the whale's body, and 
in so doing the carcass is rolled over on its side. 
Next, if the catch is a sperm whale, a cut is made 
between the upper jaw and the mass of blubber 
above, and which is known as the * junk,' and if 
the whale is very large a cut is also made be- 
tween the junk and the upper portion of the head 
known as the ' case.' A cut is also made across 
the root of the lower jaw at the corner of the 
mouth, a chain is fastened to the jaw and as this 

is raised by one tackle the other is slacked off 

29 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

until the wliale lies upon its back. The men. 
then cut through the end of the tongue and the 
flesh and the jaw are hoisted to the deck. Then, 
by turning the body over by means of the tackles, 
cuts are made in the junk to which straps and 
lines are fastened and the tackles heaved up 
until the body is nearly vertical, when the men 
cut the immense head free from the body and 
moor it to the ship's quarter while they proceed 
to strip off the blubber. This is done by cutting 
spirally around the body and hauling on the 
tackles so that the great strip, or ^ blanket-piece,' 
is j)ulled off or unrolled until the flukes are 
reached, when it is cut off and hoisted on deck. 
The head is then hauled to the gangway, and 
either hoisted bodily on deck in the case of a 
small whale, or separated into the junk and case, 
the former being taken aboard and the latter 
lifted to the deck level and a hole cut in and the 
spermaceti baled out, or if the whole head is 
taken aboard the spermaceti is baled out on deck. 
When first taken from the case, this valuable ma- 
terial is liquid and oil-like but it rapidly hardens 
upon exposure to the air. 

" Meanwhile, the blubber, or blanket-piece, is 
30 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

lowered into the hatch and stowed skin-side 
down, in the blubber-room, where it is hacked 
into pieces about a foot square, which are taken 
on deck to the mincing-horse to be chopped up by 
big, two-handled mincing knives or by a ma- 
chine. The minced chunks of blubber are then 
placed in huge iron kettles and boiled on the try 
works — ^brick flreiDlaces near the foremast, — by 
fires fed by the blubber from which the oil has 
been boiled out and known as ^ cracklings.' As 
fast as the oil is boiled from the minced blubber 
it is ladled into a cooler and then into casks 
which are finally headed up and stored below 
decks. At last, when all of the blanket-piece has 
been tried out, the junk is cut up and boiled 
separately, as the oil from this is of superior 
quality and commands a very high price. All 
that I have told you relates to the cutting in of a 
sperm whale, but if the catch is a right whale or 
bowhead the entire head is not taken aboard, the 
valuable whalebone only being saved. 

"All this cutting in and boiling is the most ex- 
hausting, back-breaking work which the whale- 
men are compelled to perform, and there is no 
lull or let-up in the ceaseless toil for three or 

31 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

four days wliile boiling is going on. The work 
is divided into watches of six hours, — and here 
it may be well to remember that whaling ships 
always keep six bell watches instead of eight bell 
watches like merchantmen, or, in other words, 
the watches on a whaler are from 7 until 11 
A. M._, from 11 until 3, and from 3 until 7, instead 
of from 8 to 12, from 12 to 4 and from 4 to 8. 
Moreover, the whalers never ring the half hours 
on the bells. While cutting and boiling, half the 
crew is constantly at work with the officers, 
such as mates and boat-steerers, looking after 
the fires and ladling out the oil, while one man 
is always at the wheel and another is constantly 
at the lookout at the masthead. 

" But if cutting in and boiling is the hardest 
work and is unspeakably dirty and nauseating, 
it is nothing as compared with the casks of ' fat 
lean ' in point of filth and odor. Fat leans are 
the parts of the blubber which have bits of meat 
attached to them, and as these cannot readily 
be boiled down, they are tossed into open casks 
to rot for the sake of the oil which drains from 
them. When the mass has thoroughly decom- 
posed the men are compelled to lean inside the 

32 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALER^ 

casks and fish out tlie putrid meat with, their 
hands while breathing the awful fuines and ter- 
rific stench for hours at a time. 

" There is an old saying that one can smell a 
whale ship twenty miles to windward, and this is 
scarcely exaggeration. How any human beings 
could stand the life of hard work, danger, poor 
food, years at sea, awful smells and incredible 
filth is something the ordinary mortal cannot 
understand. 

"Now, boys, I've given you an idea of the 
worst part of whaling, and if you'll come around 
to-morrow I'll tell you about the ships in which 
these hardy men went to sea, the manner of men 
they were and how the whales were caught." 



33 



CHAPTER III 

" AT'OU can understand," said the curator, 
-■- wlien the boys visited his ofa.ce the fol- 
lowing day, " that vessels which were intended 
to withstand the gales and seas of every ocean 
for years at a time had to be the strongest, 
staunchest, most seaworthy and able ships which 
man could build. For month after month they 
cruised beneath the scorching equatorial sun, 
while the pitch bubbled from their deck seams 
and the woodwork dried and warped; then, for 
months, or even years, they were buffeted by 
Arctic gales, nipped in ice-floes, frozen fast for 
the long, dreary months of Polar winters, and a 
few months later would be scudding under bare 
poles before an East Indian typhoon. Often, at 
the end of a three or four years' voyage, they 
would be stripped and laid up on the mud flats, 
neglected and forgotten, until weeds and grass 
sprouted from their opening seams, and then, 

H 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

years later, they would be patched up, refitted 
and once again would sail, to cruise far and near 
upon the stormiest parts of all the oceans. To 
the whalemen, seaworthiness was everything, and 
speed, comfort and appearance were of no impor- 
tance, and while no stronger, better ships were 
ever built, yet most of them were heavy, bluff- 
bowed and tubby. Of course there were some 
which were models of beauty, — as graceful and 
swift as the famous old clippers, and many of 
the captains kept their ships as spick and span, 
as well painted, as clean, and with rigging as 
taut and well tarred as any yacht. But the bulk 
of the ships, even if they sailed forth trim and 
neat, returned dingy, weather-beaten, scarred 
with innumerable battles of the sea and ice and so 
thoroughly soaked with grease and oil that their 
planks could have been boiled out in a try works. 
And often, when a ship returned from a long 
cruise, she looked more like the Flying Dutch- 
man or a derelict than like a real ship. But the 
whalemen were out for oil and to make money 
and had enough to occupy hands and minds with- 
out spending time keeping their ships in order. 
Between catching, cutting, boiling and necessary 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

work, the men had no time to devote to keeping 
their vessels in trim and only did the most essen- 
tial things to keep the shijDS afloat and sea- 
worthy. Always there were smashed boats to be 
repaired, lines and ropes to be spliced, harpoons 
or ' irons ' to be made, tools to be sharpened, iron 
poles to be made and fitted and the men's work 
was so hard, so dangerous and so exhausting 
while capturing the whales, cutting-in and boil- 
ing that both officers and men were compelled to 
rest between whiles in order to be fit for the next 
chase. For this reason the crews were never 
compelled to do other than absolutely necessary 
duties aboard ship and were allowed to amuse 
themselves in any way they saw fit. Many of 
them were adepts at carving bone and whales' 
teeth and devoted days and weeks to engraving 
the teeth of sperm whales, or ^ scrimshawing ' as 
it's called, or making chessmen, ornaments and 
other curios from the teeth or bones of the 
whales they killed. In scrimshawing teeth the 
design was first scratched upon the smooth sur- 
face of the tooth and then colors, such as paint, 
India ink or soot, were rubbed into the lines, the 
result resembling a steel engraving printed on 

30 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie tooth. And many of tliese scrimsliawed teeth, 
although made only with a sailor's knife, were as 
fine, as artistic and as beautiful as any etching 
or engraving. Sometimes the men designed 
their own pictures, but the best were traced or 
transferred from book illustrations or maga- 
zines. Many of the other articles they made 
were also marvels of patience and skill, for time 
was of no account and hung heavy on the men's 
hands. Their cribbage-boards, made from wal- 
rus tusks, their ivory chessmen, their inlaid table 
tops, boxes and other articles of bone, tortoise- 
shell and mother-of-pearl, were as delicate and 
well-finished as anything j)roduced by the arti- 
sans of the Orient. But perhaps the happiest 
hours of the whalemen's lives when at sea were 
when they met another ship and all went * gam- 
ming,' or visiting. There were letters to be sent 
home and received, news from home and distant 
ports to be heard, comparisons of catches made, 
and plenty of liquor to be drunk, tobacco to be 
smoked and chewed and specially good food to be 
eaten, for to ' gam ' was to have a real celebra- 
tion in forecastles as well as in the cabins. At 

such times the men would strive to outdo one an- 

37 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEBQ 

other in yarns and stories and in boasting of 
tlieir catches and oil ; they danced and skylarked 
on the decks; they held boat races; those who 
had battered fiddles or concertinas brought them 
out, and to the music the whalemen sang their 
songs and chanteys, many of which were senti- 
mental, others descriptive of their lives, others 
merely rollicking lays; but all bearing on the 
men's occupation, their hopes, fears or suffer- 
ings, the dangers that they faced or their desire 
to see home once more. One favorite song was 
this: 

" * 'Twas advertised in Boston, 
New York and Buffalo, 
Five hundred brave Americans, 
A-whaling for to go. 

They send you to New Bedford, 

The famous whaling port ; 
They send you to a shark's store, 

And board and fit you out. 

They send you to a boarding-house, 

For a time to dwell ; 
The thieves there, they are thicker 

Than the other side of hell. 
38 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

They tell you of the whaling ships, 

A-going in and out ; 
They swear you'll make your fortune 

Before you're five months out. 

But now we're out at sea, my boys, 

We find life hard enough ; 
A little piece of stinking meat 

And a darned small bag of duff. 

Next comes the running rigging, 

Which you're all supposed to know; 

'Tis "Lay aloft, you son-of-a-gun, 
Or overboard you go." 

The cap'n's on the quarter-deck, 

A-squintin ' at the sails. 
Aloft four men are standin', 

A-searchin ' for sperm whales. 

The cooper at his vise bench 

Is makin' iron-poles, 
And the mate upon the main hatch 

Is cursin' all our souls.' 

" Or again, some jolly, rollicking, hearty song 

would be roared out by a score of lusty lungs, 

like the following : 

39 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEBS 

'We're homeward bound, oh, happy sound! 

Good-bye, fare ye well, 

Good-bye, fare ye well! 
Come, rally the crew and run quick around, 
Hui-rah, my bullies, we're homeward bound! 

Our yards we '11 swing and our sails we '11 set. 

Good-bye, fare ye well. 

Good-bye, fare ye well! 
The whales we are leaving, we leave with regret, 
Hurrah, my bullies, we're homeward bound! 

Oh, heave with a will and heave long and strong, 

Good-bye, fare ye well. 

Good-bye, fare ye well! 
Oh, sing a good chorus, for 'tis a good song, 
HtUTah, my bullies, we're homeward bound! 

We're homeward bound at last, they say, 

Good-bye, fare ye well. 

Good-bye, fare ye well! 
Then tail on the braces and run her away, 
Hurrah, my bullies, we're homeward bound! 

We're homeward bound, may the winds blow fair, 

Good-bye, fare ye well. 

Good-bye, fare ye well! 
Wafting us true to the friends waiting there. 
Hurrah, my bullies, we're homeward bound! ' 
40 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

"And in addition to their songs, which were 
strictly whaling songs, the Yankee whalemen 
had their chanteys as did the merchant sailors. 
Most of these were, in fact, identical with those 
sung on merchant ships, but many were altered 
to suit the needs or tastes of the whalemen. 
There was the famous halliard chantey of * Whis- 
key Johnny ' ; 

** *0h, whiskey is the life of man, 
Whiskey ! Johnny ! 
It always was since time began, 
Oh, whiskey for my Johnny ! 

Oh, whiskey makes me wear old clo's, 

Whiskey ! Johnny ! 
'Twas whiskey gave me a broken nose, 

Oh, whiskey for my Johnny! 

A glass of grog for every man, 

Whiskey ! Johnny ! 
And a bottle full for the Chantey Man, 

Oh, whiskey for my Johnny ! ' 

" Then there were the topsail chanteys, for 
each and every chantey had its use, and there 
were halliard chanteys, sheet, tack and bow- 
line chanteys, capstan chanteys, and, in fact, 

41 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

chanteys to accompany every sort of work per- 
formed aboard the ships. A favorite topsail 
chantey was ^ Hanging Johnny,' which ran : 

* ' * They call me Hanging Johnny, 
Away-e-Oh ! 
They call me Hanging Johnny, 
So hang, boys, hang.' 

" Then there was ^ Cape Horn ' : 

" 'I wish to the Lord I'd never been bom, 
To me way, — hay, hay, — ^yah ! 
To go sailing round and round Cape Horn, 
A long time ago — ! 

Around Cape Horn where wild gales blow. 
To me way, — hay, hay, — yah ! 

Around Cape Horn through sleet and snow, 
A long time ago — ! 

Around Cape Horn with frozen sails. 
To me way, — hay, hay, — yah ! 

Around Cape Horn to hunt for whales, 
A long time ago — ! ' 

"Another favorite with the whalemen was 

' Sally Brown,' and probably no old chantey has 

ever spread so far and wide as this. Wherever 

one goes, — to the distant South Sea Islands, to 

42 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie spice-laden Caribbees, to the frozen shores of 
Alaska or Hudson's Bay, — one will hear the air 
and words, often mutilated and mispronounced, 
but always recognizable. It's a long chantey, 
but the first verse is : 

'* 'Oh, SaUy Brown of New York City, 
Aye Sally, — Sally Brown, 
Of pretty Sal this is a ditty, 
I'll spend my money on SaUy Brown I * 

" Some of the chanteys, too, were meaningless 
and ridiculous jumbles of words, such as the one 
which began : 

" 'There once was a ship in the northern sea. 
And the name of the ship was the Oreen 

Willow Tree, 
As we sailed in the lowlands, lies so low, 
And oh, we sailed in the lowlands O, ' 

while others were really humorous, such as the 
one that commenced : 

" *0h, the jackass is a pretty bird, 

He is so neat and slick, 

One-half of him is head and ears, 

The other half is kick 1 ' 

43 



THE BOYS* BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Or again, this one : 

** 'And who d'ye think 's the skipper o' her? 
Blow, boys, blow! 
Why, Holy Joe, the nigger lover ! 
Blow, my bully boys, blow ! 

Now who d'ye think 's the chief mate o' her? 

Blow, boys, blow! 
A big mul-latter come from Antigua! 

Blow, my bully boys, blow ! 

And what d'ye think we had for dinner? 

Blow, boys, blow! 
Mosquito's heart and sandfly's liver, 

Blow, my bully boys, blow ! ' 

" But perhaps the greatest favorite among the 
whalemen, as it was the most appropriate, was 
the capstan chantey known as ' Fishes ' : 

* ' ' Oh, a ship she was rigged and ready for sea, 
Windy weather! Stormy weather! 
And all of her sailors were fishes to be, 

Blow ye winds westerly, gentle sou 'westerly, 
Blow ye winds westerly, — steady she goes. 

Oh, first came the herring, the king o' the sea, 

Windy weather ! Stormy weather ! 
He jumped on the poop. " I '11 be cap 'n ! " cried he. 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

Blow ye winds westerly, gentle sou 'westerly, 
Blow ye winds westerly, — steady she goes. 

Oh, next came a flatfish, — they call him a skate, 
Windy weather! Stormy weather! 
**If you be the cap'n why sure I'm the mate! " 
Blow ye winds westerly, gentle sou 'westerly, 
Blow ye winds westerly, — steady she goes. ' 

" It was by singing such songs as these that the 
crew gave vent to their feelings and voiced their 
opinions of their o£3.cers, for, strange as it may 
seem, almost anything could be said or sung in a 
chantey without bringing reprimand or punish- 
ment, and the leader of the chanteys or the 
Chantey Man, as he was called, was a highly- 
privileged character and a great favorite on 
board ship. There is nothing in the world like a 
rousing song to help make hard work light, and 
the rhythm and cadence of the chanteys also en- 
abled the men to pull or haul in unison and to 
labor to better advantage. This was appreci- 
ated by men and officers alilie, and the chantey 
man, as a result, held a unique position and did 
little more than sing his way along, for his songs 
put such life and pep into the crew that officers 

would overlook his ^ sojering ' tendencies. 

45 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

"Usually tlie chantey man was an old hand 
who knew every song of the seven seas and the 
five oceans, and, in addition, he would improvise 
new ones or would add new verses or words to 
the old ones to suit the needs of the case or to 
express the feelings of himself and his mates in 
regard to officers, ship or work. Even the most 
brutal skippers and hardest down-east ' bucko ' 
mates would grin good-naturedly at the vivid de- 
scriptions and pointed quips at their personali- 
ties and characters when roared forth in a chan- 
tey, although the same sentiments, if spoken, 
would have resulted in a knock-out blow with a 
belaying pin or worse. 

"And now, perhaps, you may wonder what 
manner of men these were who sailed forth in the 
staunch old New England ships to battle with 
the elements and wage war with the giants of the 
deep for years on end. 

" Many people imagine that the whalemen 
Avere seamen, and many songs and stories de- 
scribe them as ' sailors ' par excellence. As a 
matter of fact, however, the rank and file of 
whalemen were neither seamen nor sailors. 

" To be sui'e, the captains, mates and ' boat- 
46 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

steerers ' or harpooniers were among the best sea- 
men the world has ever Imown, but the crews, — 
the men who did the hard work, pulled the boats, 
cut-in and boiled down the blubber and took all 
the knocks and blows, — ^were raw, rough lands- 
men of the worst type and were known as 
^ greenies.' 

" Although there were plenty of good sailors 
in the New England ports, the whaling captains 
would have none of them and avoided the seamen 
as if they had the plague. Never, willingly, 
would they allow one on their ships, and, as one 
old captain put it, they wouldn't ship a sailor if 
he paid his passage. 

" This may seem very strange, but the reason 
is simple. In the fii'st place, your true deep- 
water sailor is a born grumbler and ' sea-lawyer * 
and he knows just how far his offl-cers can carry 
bullying and abuse, what he is entitled to, the 
duties he must perform, and every custom and 
rule of the sea. He could not be fooled into 
shipping under the conditions that prevailed on 
whaling ships; he could not be induced to ship 
for ^lays,' or shares, in the catch, as did the 

whalemen, and if conditions did not suit him, he 

47 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

would desert at the first cliance, and while at sea, 
would stir up discontent among the crew and 
would hatch out mutinies. 

"For these reasons, the whaling ships drew 
their crews from the worst type of landsmen; 
riff-raff from far and near; gutter sweepings 
from the big cities, loafers from park benches; 
absconders and embezzlers; drunkards and ex- 
convicts, with a good sprinkling of discontented 
farm-hands, factory workers, ne'er-do-wells and 
men from the Middle West and interior States. 
These were attracted to the whaling ports by at- 
tractive, alluring posters and hand-bills advertis- 
ing for men to go a-whaling and promising tre- 
mendous profits and a life of adventure and 
travel. Lured by these, the poor fellows gath- 
ered at the ports and entered their names on the 
shipping agent's or ^ shark's ' lists. In the ad- 
vertisements the men were promised a lay^ of 

^ The whalemen always worked for lays instead o£ wages. 
A lay being one barrel, or rather its value, of oil out of a 
definite number. The captain and officers had the largest 
lays, the coopers the 3iext largest, the boat-steerers next, 
followed by the stewards, cooks, seamen and last of all the 
greenhands who received the smallest la5'S of all. 

The exact division of the lays varied according to the ship, 
the time, the cruise and various other matters, but the follow- 
ing example of the division of lays, the amounts received and 
the catch taken will serve as an illustration. 

48 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

the ship's catcli, — in other words one barrel of 
oil out of a certain number, — an advance of sev- 
enty-flve dollars, an outfit of clothes, board and 
lodging until aboard ship and good food. For 
each man obtained by these methods, the ship- 
ping agent was paid ten dollars and a refund for 
all expenses incidental to the transportation, 
board and outfit of the men, and as this was not 
to be paid until the men were on the ship, the 
sharks saw to it that the crew was on hand when 
the anchor was weighed. 

" But the deluded men saw little come of the 
promises made to them. From the advance of 



I.AYS OF A NEW BEDFORD SHIP IN i860 



Dr. 
Amount of charge 
Sundries 



Cr. 
60,154 gals, oil 
Due to ship 
Charge 



$1,568.90 
365-10 

$1,934.00 

$39,100.10 

$21,606.49 

1,934.00 



Bal. to owners $19,672.49 



Value 

Dr. Lays of lays 

Captain 1/12 $3,258.34 

Mate 1/18 2,172.23 

2nd Mate 1/28 1,396.44 

3d Mate 1/35 1,117-14 

Cooper 1/60 651.67 

10 Seamen 1/150 

each 2,606.70 

13 Grecnhands i /i75 

each 2,904.53 

4th Mate 1/60 651.67 

4 Boat-stecr- 

ers I /80 

each 
Steward i /90 

Cook I /no 



49 



1,955-00 

434-44 
355-45 

$17,493-61 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

seventy-five dollars were deducted all tlie ex- 
penses wliicli tlie agents had paid out for the men, 
— as well as his ten-dollar fee, — and the prices he 
paid for every item of outfit were trebled or quad- 
rupled ; the train fares were doubled, the charges 
for the foul boarding-places where the men were 
housed were falsified, and when at last the bills 
were handed to the recruit and ' signed off ' by 
him, he found he hadn't a cent to his name and 
was more frequently heavily in debt. 

" ^o sailor could ever be bamboozled into this 
sort of thing unless he were drunk, and only the 
greenest of greenies, or men who had absolutely 
no other future, could be induced to submit to it. 
Moreover, the men thus secured knew so little of 
the sea and of foreign lands that they dared not 
desert, even if they had the chance, while there 
was no cooperation or organization among them, 
and therefore little danger of mutiny. To-day, 
however, this class of men is almost a thing of the 
past, and the whaling crews are made up largely 
of Portuguese from the Azores or Cape Verde Is- 
lands. Many of them are negroes, but nearly all 
are hard-working, skillful whalemen and willing 
to work and slave for returns which would not 

P9 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

attract any white man. They have been at the 
whaling game for so long that they cannot be 
fooled, robbed or cheated by the * sharks.' Even 
a great many of the captains of the modern whal- 
ing ships are Portuguese, and when whaling was 
on the decline and oil fell to such low prices that 
the ships were laid up and the industry nearly 
died, these men still made it a business and built 
fortunes from the whales which they chased and 
killed in their trim schooners, for they are satis- 
fled with small profits, they can live cheaply and 
are very thrifty, even though they are never the 
splendid seamen that their Yankee predecessors 
were. 

" Perhaps you may think that crews of men 
such as I have described would make poor whale- 
men, but this was not the case. Although many 
never learned to be seamen, and could not be 
taught, cursed or beaten into learning the vari- 
ous ropes and rigging of a ship, yet they devel- 
oped a wonderful hardihood, courage and capac- 
ity for work and could handle the whaleboats to 
perfection. 

" These boats, by the way, are the most sea- 
worthy and safest small boats which were ever 

0X 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEBS 

designed or built, and when properly handled 
can live in almost any sea. They are thirty 
feet long, six feet wide, and with a depth of 
twenty-two inches amidships and thirty-seven 
inches at bow and stern, — mere cockleshells in 
size, — but staunch, seagoing craft in the hands 
of the whalemen. They are rowed by five im- 
mense ash oars, — fourteen, sixteen and eighteen 
feet long, and are steered by a still longer twen- 
ty-two foot oar. On one side, are the sixteen- 
foot oars — Ivnow^n as the tub and bow oars — 
while on the ojjposite side are the fourteen-foot 
harpoonier's and after oars and the midship oar. 
" Just as perfect for their purpose as the boats 
themselves is their equipment with every ar- 
ticle designed for a specific purpose and always 
in its place, for an instant's delay or confusion 
or an article misplaced might mean death to all 
on board. On the sides at the bow are the irons 
or harpoons and the lances with their tips 
sheathed and resting in cleats all ready to be 
seized and used at a second's notice. Coiled in 
wooden tubs are the lines to hold the whales 
when struck — the finest hemp rope that can be 

made and three hundred fathoms in length. In 

52 




HER DINGY PATCHED SAILS WERE BELLYING OUT LIKE DUN- 
COLORED BALLOONS 




THESE BOATS ARE THE MOST SEAWORTHY AND SAFEST SMALL 
BOATS WHICH WERE EVER DESIGNED OR BUILT 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie bow-box is a liatcliet, ready to cut the lines 
in case the whale ' sounds ' and goes beyond the 
limit of the rope or in case it kinks or is jammed. 
There are candles, compasses, lanterns, glasses, 
matches and other articles in the stern locker. 
A keg of water is always in place as are boat- 
hooks, waif-flags, fluke-spades and buckets of 
canvas, and in addition, there are short paddles 
which are used in place of the oars when it is 
necessary to approach a whale cautiously and in 
silence. 

"At the stem of the boat is a slot or ' chock ' 
through Avhich the line is led when the whale is 
' fast,' and in the stern is a strong post known as 
a * loggerhead,' over which a turn of the line is 
taken to hold it when being towed by the stricken 
whale. To prevent any noise, the rowlocks are 
covered, or ' thummed,' with greased marline, 
and in the front seat or thwart is a knee-brace 
called a ^clumsy cleat,' so that the whaleman 
may brace himself with his leg when throwing 
the harpoon or ^ iron ' at the whale. 

" Most people think of the harpoons as light, 

spear-like affairs which are thrown like javelins 

at the whales ; but in reality, they are immense, 

53 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

heavy weapons which must be held in both hands 
and heaved, and their extreme range is only 
about fifteen feet. Nowadays harpoons fired by 
guns with powder have largely taken the place 
of the old-time hand weapons ; but many whale- 
men still prefer the old-fashioned implements. 
These harpoons, or ^ irons/ are merely to capture 
the whale or make ' fast ' until the creature is 
tired out and exhausted when he is killed by 
means of keen-bladed lances, or at the present 
time, more often by explosive bomb-lances. 

"And now, having considered the ships, the 
boats, the men, and the weapons they used, let us 
accompany the whalemen to sea a;id learn how 
they lived and fared, how they fought and cap- 
tured the whales and the adventures they had on 
their long voyages." 



54 



CHAPTER IV 

"inp YEN after a whale ship was ready for sea, 
■^—--^ after she had been ^ hove-down ' — or, in 
other words, pulled over on her side by tackles 
until her bottom was exposed, — cleaned, caulked 
and coppered; after her topsides had been re- 
paired and painted, her rigging tarred down, re- 
newed and tightened, her spars scraped and in 
place, when new sails had been bent on and 
from stem to stern, from truck to keel, she was 
ready for her long cruise, — there was still much 
to be done. First, there were the whaleboats 
and their equipment which I have already de- 
scribed. The number of these carried varied 
with the size of the vessel, but if a ' four-boat ' 
ship, three were hung to the huge wooden davits 
on the port side and one on the quarter of the 
starboard side, as the big cutting-in gang-way 
must be left clear. In addition, two or more 
extra boats were stored on overhead racks be- 
tween the main and mizzen masts. 

55 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

"And then came the supplies, fittings, provi- 
sions and other articles which totaled over 650 
different articles. By the time that these were 
aboard there was little room to spare, for 
every available inch of space was filled and 
the vessel became a floating warehouse, as 
well as a blacksmith shop, store, carjDenter's 
shop, sail loft and ship chandlery. As the 
ships cruised mainly in the open ocean and 
were gone for years and seldom touched at 
any civilized ports, it was essential that they 
carry everything that might be needed for 
consumption, for use or for making repairs 
to the boats or the vessel herself. And when, at 
last, the ship set sail she was independent of the 
rest of the world and fully prepared to cope with 
any emergency which might arise. 

"Aft were the officers' cabins and in the fore- 
castle the crew lived. Rigging, hawsers, cut- 
ting-in gear and tackle; oars, anchors, lumber, 
and many other articles were packed in the fore- 
hold, while the main hold was filled with the 
casks destined to hold the oil, but which, when 
the ship set sail, were filled with ]jro visions, sup- 
plies and fresh water. Those lowest down were 

56 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

filled with, water, above these were casks contain- 
ing food and a vast variety of miscellaneous ar- 
ticles, and on top, were those holding the goods 
which would be used before the first whales were 
taken, by which time they would be empty and 
ready to be filled with the precious oil. 

"When we consider that every ship carried 
such a vast amount of stores, and that in the 
heyday of whaling, sixty ships or more sailed 
each, season from IsTew Bedford, with many more 
from Nantucket, Provincetown, Sag Harbor, 
Salem, Essex, Portland, New London and other 
ports, you can understand what the whaling 
business meant to New England. 

" The stores alone for the New Bedford fleet 
amounted to two million dollars each season, 
while many millions more were expended for 
labor, for ship and boat building, for rigging, for 
boats, for spars, for sails and for the thousand 
and one other things which made whaling pos- 
sible. 

Some idea of the vast quantities of supplies required for 
outfitting the whale ships may be gained by the following list 
of supplies which were furnished in 1858 to the New Bedford 
fleet consisting of sixty-five vessels. 

33,000 tons rivets 130,000 lbs. tobacco 

450 whaleboats 5,200 lbs. linseed oil 

57 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 



" Thousands of workmen, skilled artizans and 
manufacturers were kept constantly at work, all 
dependent upon the whalers, and whale oil liter- 
ally was king in those days, for life, commerce and 
business were all maintained and kept prosper- 
ous by the whaling fleets. Wherever there were 
forests, sawmills were built and the trees cut 
to furnish lumber for planks, timbers, barrels 
and cordwood. Many sail-lofts and rope-walks 
made nothing save cordage and sails for the 
whale ships. Scores of blacksmith shops and 



23,000 bricks 

2,000 candles 

1,000 tons hoop iron 

36,000 ft. oars 

13,000 lbs. cotton twine 

2,600 gals, rum 

260 cords pine wood 

15,000 lbs. sheath nails 

65,000 ft. pine boards 

205,000 yds: canvas 

1,200 cords oak wood 

520,000 lbs. copper 

739,000 lbs. cordage 

22,500 lbs. flags 

234,000 yds. cotton cloth 

39,000 gals, white lead 

400 gals, turpentine 

1,000 gals, liquors 

^5o,ooo ft. heading 

400 bbls. tar 

8,500 iron poles 

1,000,000 staves 

52,000 lbs. copper nails 

32,500 ft. boat boards 

200 casks lime 



13,000 lbs. paint 
I20 casks powder 
32,500 bbls. water 
7,150 bbls'. pork 
78,000 lbs. sugar 
14,300 lbs. tea 
13,650 bbls. flour 
39,000 lbs. rice 
16^300 lbs. ham 
26,000 bus. potatoes 
97,500 gals, molasses 
78,000 lbs. butter 
1,950 bus. corn 
10,400 bbls. beef 
39,000 bbls. apples 
18,000 lbs. coffee 
400 bbls. vinegar 
260 bbls. meal 
13,000 bus. beans 
32,500 lbs; codfish 
1,300 bus. onions 
19,500 bus. salt 
19,500 lbs. cheese 
13.300 lbs. raisins 



68 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

hundreds of smiths were kept busy from morn 
till night making lances, irons, blubber hooks 
and fittings, and boat yards near every whaling 
port turned out nothing but the staunch whale- 
boats. Spinning mills and textile factories were 
given over com^Dletely to turning out sailcloth, 
bunting and cotton for the whalemen's use. 
Whole farms sold their entire crops to supply 
the whalers and herds of cattle were required to 
supply the butter, cheese and beef. Cooperage 
shops by hundreds produced the thousands of 
casks and barrels required and there even were 
newspapers and periodicals devoted entirely to 
whaling and in which no word or line was 
printed which was not of interest to the whale- 
men or their families. 

"And all these workers; these toilers; these 
experts, took a great pride and a personal inter- 
est in their work, for each and every one knew 
that upon the quality of his product depended 
in greater or less degree the success of the whal- 
ers, the size of the catches and even the lives of 
his neighbors. And, as a result, only work of the 
highest class, articles as near perfection as could 

be made, were good enough for the whalemen. 

59 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

The rope makers realized that if their lines gave 
way the wounded whale would escape. The boat- 
makers knew that upon the staunchness, buoy- 
ancy and strength of their boats depended the 
success of the chase and the lives of the crew. 
Upon the temper of the blacksmith's steel hung 
the success of the harpoonier and the death of 
the whale. The sail-makers knew that the whale 
ship's sails must withstand months of tropic 
rains, weeks of scorching sun, ice-laden gales 
and clinging sleet, and the coopers strove to pro- 
duce casks that would withstand the roughest 
usage and still stay tight and strong and hold 
the precious oil for months and years. 

"When the last cask and box and bale was 
aboard, and when the boats had been swung in 
their places the ship waited only for its crew and 
officers. The average whaling ship carried a 
total of thirty-five to forty men. There were 
four boats' crews of four men each, or sixteen 
seamen ; four ship-keepers or ^ spare-men ' ; four 
boat-steerers ; the captain ot skipper ; four * of- 
ficers ' or mates ; the cooper, the steward, the 
cook and one or more boys. 

" Every man had his duties and his place and 
60 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

was ready to do Ms part without hesitation. 
Each mate had a boat under his charge, while 
the captain often lowered also and went after 
whales himself. In each boat, too, in addition to 
the mate and the crew of four men, was a boat- 
steerer and every man in a boat was assigned to 
a certain place and to certain work. The first, 
or bow, oar was always the place of honor and 
the bow oarsman assisted the mate with his 
lances when killing a whale and was his right- 
hand man. The man who handled the long, 
heavy, midship oar, on the other hand, had little 
to do save pull on his oar while the tub oars- 
man's duty was to throw water on the line as it 
flew through the bow-chock when the whale dove 
or ' sounded ' and the stroke-oarsman gave the 
time or ' strokes ' to the others and also helped 
the boat-steerer in keeping a clear line and in 
hauling in and coiling it down. 

"When the boat was approaching or 'going 
on ' a whale, the first or ' harpoonier's ' oar was 
pulled by the boat-steerer while the mate steered ; 
but as soon as the whale was close, the boat- 
steerer threw the iron and struck the whale. 

TheU; as soon as the boat was ' fast,' the mate 

61 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

went forward and the boat-steerer took his place 
at the steering oar while the mate stood in the 
bow and waited for his chance to kill the creature 
with the lance. 

" Whenever the boats were lowered, the ship 
was left under short sail in charge of the captain 
(unless he took one of the boats) , the four spare- 
men, the steward, cook, boys and cooper. Ex- 
cept when on the whaling grounds the seamen 
had little to do, for it was the best policy to let 
them rest and conserve their strength for the 
chase of the whale. 

"I have already mentioned that the whale- 
men's watches were ' six bell ' watches and more- 
over, when on the grounds, each boat's crew 
formed a watch thus giving four watches of 
three hours each for the night, that is if the 
vessel were a four-boat ship. 

"Before darlmess fell, the lighter sails were 
furled, the topsails reefed and the vessel was 
hove-to in the wind so that she would remain 
practically motionless, and by wearing ship now 
and again, the crew would find themselves at al- 
most the same spot in the morning as on the 
preceding night. In the Arctic and Antarctic 

62 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

regions, however, whaling operations were con- 
tinuous for there was no darlvuess and the whale- 
men made every hour count during their short 
seasons, 

" Throughout the day, four lookouts were con- 
stantly kept on watch at the mastheads, two men 
being stationed forward, with a boat-steerer and 
mate aft, and on the grounds the ship would 
cover practically every square mile of the sea by 
taking long tacks to windward and then sailing 
down before the wind. 

"All this, however, took place after the ship 
had been several weeks or months at sea and dur- 
ing the intervening time the life of the men was 
one incessant round of hard toil and labor. 
There were various odds and ends of cargo and 
stores to be stowed away, decks to be scoured 
or holy-stoned, gear to be overhauled and put in 
readiness for the chase and last, but most im- 
portant of all, the ' greenies ' had to be broken 
in. 

" The bulk of the crew had never been to sea 

and knew nothing of ships, and not until the 

land was dropped well astern and the long cruise 

began did the poor, deluded landlubbers realize 

63 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

what was in store for them. But just as soon 
as the ship was ' out of soundings ' or on the 
high seas their training or breaking in com- 
menced. Although they might be, and usually 
were, deathly seasick and were filled with mortal 
terror of the lurching, rolling ship and grew 
dizzy almost to fainting whenever they looked 
up at the swaying, soaring masts, yet they were 
ordered into the rigging and compelled to go 
aloft. If they demurred or hesitated, they were 
spurred on by curses, kicks or blows, and as even 
the danger of going up the ratlines was prefer- 
able to the marline sjjike or ropes'-end held by 
the mate the poor fellows usually managed to 
crawl a few feet above the deck. In fact it was 
a case of necessity, for it would take a brave and 
courageous man indeed, to refuse to obey the or- 
ders of the hard-fisted, cursing mates, and the 
scums of humanity which formed the whaling 
crews were neither brave nor courageous. 
There is an old saying to the effect that ' needs 
must when the devil drives,' and the devil him- 
self would have had no chance in a competition 
with a Yankee whaler's mate when it came to 
driving. They were imbued with the idea that 

64: 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

any man could become a sailor if lie wanted to 
or was hammered and pounded and abused into 
it, and, oddly enough, tlieir theories were usually 
borne out to large extent and within a surpris- 
ingly short time the former landlubbers from 
parks, gutters, mills and farms were able to run 
aloft, to man yards and footropes, to tail onto 
halliards, braces and sheets ; to reef the flapping 
beating sails and even to maintain a lookout 
from the topgallant crosstrees. Of course, many 
of them were utterly hopeless and were phys- 
ically unable to go far up the rigging, while 
others never could learn the ropes, sails and rig- 
ging or could tell a halliard from a main-brace, 
no matter how hard the mates tried to beat such 
knowledge into their thick skulls. Usually, after 
a time, the mates decided that further efforts 
were merely a waste of energy and if the stupid 
chaps had not been seriously injured or killed 
in the process, they were detailed to deck duties 
and work which did not necessitate going aloft. 

" But whether they showed proficiency in 
learning the rigging or not, there was one thing 
which they all could learn, and that was how to 

pull a boat. In comparison with going aloft the 

65 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

boat training was cliild's play and good fun, and 
every day, when the sea was smooth and the 
winds light, the boats were lowered away and 
the men Avere trained in handling them. At first 
their efforts were unspeakably awkward and 
comical, for the long ash oars were heavy and 
clumsy and the men had never touched or seen 
such things in all their lives; but they seemed 
to take to the work and very soon became adepts. 
They could pull in unison, could obey orders in- 
stantly and Imew their duties, and a keen rivalry 
always sprang up between the various crews and 
they enjoyed nothing better than racing one an- 
other. At such times, they fairly lifted the big 
boats through the sea and put their very hearts 
and souls into the work. So too, they learned 
to handle their craft as silently as shadows when 
approaching a whale and occasionally one of the 
men would take enough interest and exhibit 
enough proficiency to be promoted to the rank 
of boat-steerer ; but the majority remained mere 
' hands ' throughout the long cruises, and when 
at last they reached the home port, found that 
after being at sea for years, they had nothing 

coming from their 'lays,' as advances, supplies 

66 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

from tlie slop-chest and otker items, — ^all charged 
at many times their value, — ^had more than ex- 
hausted their share of the catch. Seldom indeed 
did the men go to sea on a whaler more than 
once and they were glad enough to accept the 
tickets from the port to their home towns, con- 
tent to step once more on dry land and betake 
themselves to their wonted haunts. It was very 
largely due to this fact that the whaling cap- 
tains, mates and shipping agents could obtain 
crews and were able to treat the men as they 
did. 

" The men were not ^ seamen ' and had no re- 
course to the sailors' aid societies; they were 
ignorant of the law and had no redress in that 
direction, and for that matter were often fugi- 
tives from justice or of a class whose sole idea 
of the law is to keep as far from it as possible, 
and as they had no intention of ever repeating 
their experience they let the whole matter drop. 
Even when they had opportunities to desert the 
ship in a foreign port they rarely did so, for they 
were penniless and seldom had a trade or occu- 
pation by which they could earn a living; they 
knew nothing of foreign ways or tongues; they 

67 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

were not real sailors and therefore could not 
find berths on other ships, and even if they knew 
enough to apply to the American consul as dis- 
tressed seamen they were too fearful of the re- 
sults when they reached home to take the chance. 
" And while they were woefully beaten and 
abused, yet too much sympathy should not be 
wasted ux-)on them. You must remember that 
they were largely of the roughest and toughest 
class, and to them, hard knocks, rotten food, 
filthy labor, foul air, and fouler quarters were 
merely incidents. To men who had always been 
accustomed to the endless toil of farm life the 
work aboard a whaler was simple and easy. To 
the man who went to sea to escape the life of a 
convict or the death of a felon anything was 
welcome. To the drunkard who is waked night 
after night by a policeman's club, a rope's-end 
would seem like a love-pat and to gutter snipes 
who depended upon garbage pails for their living 
the stinking, worm-eaten ship's fare would be a 
luxury. Most of them, no doubt, deserved all 
they got at the hands of the mates and their 
rough treatment resulted in making men of 
them, brave and efficient, hard working and 

68 



O^HE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALEKS 

strong as long as tliey were aboard ship, and tlie 
only pity is tliat their enforced reformation was 
not more enduring. 

" Some ships were, of course, worse than 
others, for many mates and captains were hu- 
mane, decent and really good-hearted men and 
treated their crews with no little kindness and 
consideration; but as a rule, the captains, and 
more particularly the mates, were brutal, drink- 
ing men without a spark of humanity or senti- 
ment in their make-up and by years of whaling 
had become utterly calloused and indescribably 
cruel. While ashore they were obliged to keep 
themselves under control, but once at sea, and 
beyond the pale of the law, they became fiends 
in human form. 

" The great wonder is that they were not worse 

than they were, for once the ships set sail from 

the western islands, — ^where they usually put in 

for fresh vegetables, fruits, water and native 

Portuguese whalers — ^they seldom touched ports 

for months, or even years, at a time. The further 

they cruised from frequented ports, the more 

chances they had of finding whales, and as long 

as they were on the high seas the skipper was 

69 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

supreme and utterly beyond all restraint of law 
or civilization. 

" Voyages of from four to six- years' duration 
were not unusual, and the constant monotony, 
the many vexations, the confinement and the sur- 
roundings developed all that was worst and most 
brutal in men's characters. Bad as was the lot 
of the crew on the best of whaling ships, one can 
scarcely imagine what it was when a captain 
and his mates were of the hard-fisted, hard-drink- 
ing, calloused type and had no other way of 
amusing themselves than to invent new tortures 
and abuses for their men. So awful were some 
of the cruelties practised, that stories of the acts 
reached authorities at home or abroad and occa- 
sionally the officers were arrested, tried and even 
convicted. But such cases were extremely rare, 
for the word of a common seaman had no weight 
and those who testified against their officers were 
sure of worse treatment later, while money from 
the ships' owners was always spent freely to 
secure the acquittal of mates or skippers. Many 
of the most awful deeds of such men will never 
be known, but in logbooks and journals, in the 

court records, the consular reports and other 

70 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

authentic sources, you may find tales of tortures 
and cruelties inflicted on the helpless men that 
seem incredible. 

" One captain was in the habit of passing his 
leisure hours by ordering the men into the rig- 
ging and then shooting at them with his revolver. 
Another ordered one of his men stripped and 
scrubbed with lye and scouring-brick daily, and 
while the victim was driven insane by this treat- 
ment the captain escaped punishment and still 
lives, or did until recently, in New Bedford. It 
was a very common occurrence for the men to 
be strung up by their thumbs for hours at a 
time, and outright murder was frequently com- 
mitted, sometimes in a fit of rage, at other 
times deliberately, and at other times to 
cover up injuries or mutilations which had 
been produced by torture. And strange as it 
may seem, these things were not all of the past. 
Scarcely a season goes by without some com- 
plaint of unbearable cruelties or murder being 
made, and only five years ago the mate of one 
schooner from this very port of New Bedford 
charged the skipper with gagging him with a 
belaying pin forced in his mouth and lashed by 

71 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

a rope around his head, in which condition he 
had been confined for a long period. 

" No doubt many of these most inhuman cap- 
tains were actually maniacs or were temporarily 
insane, for there are many instances on record 
of the whaling captains going mad on the sub- 
ject of religion, or other matters. Oftentimes, 
these men, who were sanctimonious ashore and 
who became unbalanced through the loneliness 
of their lives and the ever present menace of 
death, endangered their ships and the lives of 
all on board, and as a rule they generally ended 
by committing suicide. 

" But all this is very unpleasant and is the 
worst side of whaling and we can now turn to 
the brighter and more romantic events in the 
whalemen's lives where unparalleled bravery 
took the place of brutality; where skill and 
hardihood replaced knocks and blows, and where 
thrills and excitement, adventure and the con- 
stant peril of instant death were the lot of the 
men." 



72 



CHAPTER V 

" y\ g I have already said, tlie whalemen's life 

--^"^ was one of incessant drudgery, continual 

training and endless work from the time they 

gained the open sea until they reached the 

* grounds,' or those portions of the ocean where 
whales were likely to he seen. Then everything 
but the hunt for their prey was given up and 
all attention was devoted to the business of the 
chase. 

"From their lofty perches on the topgallant 
crosstrees, the lookouts sweep the sea with 
keen eyes, ever on the alert to catch the little 
blurr of vapor which denotes the presence of a 
spouting whale and to shout the glad cry of 

* She blows ! ' to the offl-cers and crew on 

deck. And, instantly at the words, the entire 

ship springs into life and activity. Men drop 

tasks or amusements and dash to their boats; 

hurriedly but with perfect precision the crafts 

are lowered away. The mainyard is swung and 

73 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OP WHALERS 

the sliip hove-to, and in far less time than it 
takes to tell of it, the boats are off, dancing over 
the waves, — fairly steaming through the sea; 
as pulled by the long, ash oars and the brawny 
muscles of the men they tear away from the ship 
towards the giant creatures swimming lazily 
ahead. 

" Presently, however, as the boats draw near 
the whales, the men row more slowly and every 
sound is hushed, for the whales have keen ears 
and can detect any unusual sound at a long dis- 
tance. As silently and stealthily as ghosts the 
boats creep forward, — from the rear if the 
quarry is a sperm whale and from ahead if it 
is a right whale or bowhead, — and frequently 
the men draw in their oars and take to the pad- 
dles in order that no possible creak or rattle of 
a rowlock or splash of oars may frighten their 
prey or ' gaily ' it as the whalemen say. 

"When near the monster the boat-steerer 
drops his oar, carefully lifts the heavy iron from 
its place, unsheathes the keen point, and stand- 
ing erect in the bow, with every muscle taut^ 
every nerve tense and every sense on the alert, 

makes ready to dart his weapon into the side of 

74 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALER^ 

the unsuspecting creature as soon as lie is witliin 
reach. 

" Perhaps the whale may remain upon the sur- 
face and thus present an easy mark, or again, 
he may suddenly ^ sound ' or dive. In this case 
the rowers instantly cease their efforts and the 
boats remain motionless, waiting for the whale 
to come to the surface, and so familiar with the 
habits of the creatures are the veteran whalemen 
that they can tell by the way the whale sounds 
just where he will emerge or * breach ' to blow. 

" Very often, too, the whale becomes * gallied ' 

or frightened and dashes off at terrific speed, 

and then commences a long, back-breaking, 

heart-rending chase with the boats striving their 

utmost to come within striking distance and the 

whale doing his best to evade the men. Often 

such a chase leads the men for miles away from 

their ship and continues for many hours, but as 

long as there is the least chance of getting ^ fast ' 

the boats pursue, doggedly and ceaselessly, until 

they either capture the whale or find themselves 

so far from their vessel that there is danger of 

becoming lost. Wliether the whale lies quietly 

and allows the boats to close in, whether he 

75 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

sounds and the men rest on their oars until he 
breaches, or whether he leads them a long and 
weary chase, eventually the boat is brought 
within a score of feet of the gigantic black mass 
of flesh, bone and blubber which looks like noth- 
ing so much as the bottom of a capsized ship. 
But within that mountain of flesh lurks titanic 
strength, immeasurable power, terrific fury and 
a capability of wreaking death and destruction. 
Nearer and nearer creep the boats, until at last, 
when within a few paces, the mate shouts ' Give 
it to him ! ' and instantly at the cry the heavy 
iron is hurled with all the harpoonier's strength 
and the keen steel is buried deep in the body of 
the whale. 

" Scarcely has the iron left his hand ere the 
boat-steerer leaps aft and seizes the huge steer- 
ing oar, while the mate springs forward and 
takes his place at the bow, ready to kill the 
whale when opportunity offers. And then begins 
the most thrilling, most dangerous, and most ex- 
citing battle between man and beast which the 
world knows, — a fight to the death between the 
most powerful, the largest and the most danger- 
ous of creatures and six men in a tiny boat. 

76 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Friglitened and furious at the smart of tlie 
iron in liis side, tiie whale dashes away with the 
line fastened to the harpoon roaring through 
the bow-chock and whirling from its tub like an 
uncoiling serpent. Possibly the wounded whale 
may tear onwards on a straight course for miles ; 
again he may turn and twist and cut circles or 
' mill/ or he may sulk or sound in his vain efforts 
to free himself from the stinging iron in his 
flesh. But no matter which course he follows 
every second is filled with deadly peril for the 
men, and the utmost skill and judgment and 
lightning-like activity must be constantly 
brought into play to save lives and boat. At any 
instant the whale may suddenly change his tac- 
tics and ' mill/ in which case the boat is liable 
to be capsized, despite the almost superhuman 
skill of the boat-steerer. If he dashes straight 
away, the boat may be carried out of sight of the 
ship and lost. If he sounds too fast or too deeply 
the line may be exhausted and the boat dragged 
under the sea unless instantly cut. And in addi- 
tion to these, there are a thousand minor dangers 
to guard against. The whirring line must be 
kept free from kinks and must be kept from 

Y7 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

burning by water thrown upon it. If the line 
tangles or a coil kinks it may mean death or ter- 
rible injuries. Many a whaleman's leg has been 
torn off by the line leaping about it; many a 
whaleman has met an awful death by being 
dragged bodily beneath the sea by the whizzing 
line, and yet the rope must be kept taut by pull- 
ing in and coiling the slack at every opportunity, 
for only in this way can the boat be gradually 
worked closer and closer to the whale in order 
that the mate may give him his death blow. But 
the men give no heed to the dangers, no thought 
to the menace or the risk of life and limb ; their 
one idea is to make a kill and the whaleman's 
motto is, ^ A dead whale or a stove boat.' 

"Every gesture, every word is obeyed in- 
stantly, for all realize that upon this depends 
their lives, as well as the capture of the whale, 
while the boat-steerer must use all the strength 
of his knotted muscles, every ounce of his weight, 
every atom of the skill which is his to swing and 
steer the rushing boat, to guide it safely on its 
mad career as it is towed by the wounded giant 
of the seas to which it is fast. 

" Frequently two or more boats get fast to one 

78 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

wliale, but even so, tlie danger is no wliit less 

and more often the battle is carried on by one 

boat's crew. 

" Gradually tbe wliale is tired ; slower and 

slower become his mad dashes, shorter and 

shorter his soundings, and as the slack of line 

is hauled in the distance between boat and whale 

becomes less and less and with each foot and 

inch that the distance is decreased the perils of 

the men are increased a hundredfold. If the 

catch is a sperm whale there is the terrible, 

armed, lower jaw to be avoided, as well as the 

danger of a crushing blow from the immense 

tail, while, if the catch is a right whale a single 

sweep of the stupendous flukes may smash the 

boat to splinters and wound or kill its occupants. 

Moreover, there is not a chance of avoiding 

flukes or jaws. The men cannot dodge or retreat, 

for their craft is fast to the whale by the line 

and they must draw themselves into the very 

centre of the danger zone. Only the skill of the 

mate and his long, keen lance stand between 

them and instant death or worse, for the greatest 

danger, the utmost peril of the chase, lie in 

maldng the kill. Stung by a harpoon, the whale 

79 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

is frightened, and anxious only to rid himself of 
the iron and his tormentors, and seldom indeed 
will he turn to attack the boat. Moreover, in 
order to throw the iron it is not necessary to 
approach closer to the monster than fifteen feet. 
But when, tired and furious at his inability to 
escape, the whale at last realizes that the boat 
and its occupants are the cause of his troubles, 
he seeks only to destroy them and waits only for 
them to come within reach of his trip-hammer 
flukes or his crashing, death-dealing, many- 
toothed jaw. Of course if the whale is to be 
killed by a bomb-lance there is not so much dan- 
ger, for the explosive charge may be fired into 
the whale from a fairly safe distance ; but when 
killing with the old-time hand-lance the boat 
must be brought right alongside the monster in 
order that the mate may shove the lance into the 
whale's vitals by main strengt;h, for, unlike the 
harpoon, the lance is pushed into the whale's 
body and is not thrown. 

" Try to imagine what it means to be in a tiny 
boat beside a wounded giant whale, to be so close 
to a mountain of concentrated strength and fury 

that the lance point may be placed against his 

80 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALER^ 

side, to know that without an instant's warning 
the creature may turn and crush boat and crew 
in his awful jaws or may throw it a score of 
feet in air, broken, crushed and splintered, with 
a stroke of the gigantic tail. Try to imagine this 
and you will begin to realize the supreme cour- 
age, the wonderful self-reliance, the sublime 
faith in their mate and the marvelously steady 
nerves which the whalemen possess. 

" And the dangers are not ended by any means 
when at last the boat is alongside the whale, 
and with a grunt by the mate, the keen lance is 
driven into the creature. On the contrary, the 
greatest peril of all is that which follows, for 
rarely does a whale die instantly or quietly but 
instead struggles and fights in his death-throes 
or ' flurry ' and many a whaleman's life has been 
lost, many a boat smashed to matchwood by the 
dying efforts of a lanced whale. 

" Lifting his stupendous head far above the 
sea and bringing it crashing down with the force 
of falling mountain; snapping, thrusting, biting 
to right and left with his sharp-toothed, enor- 
mous jaw; spouting blood until the sea is crim- 
son; swinging his ponderous flukes and lashing 

31 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

the waves into froth and foam, a sperm whale in 
his flurry fights to his last gasp and will destroy 
everything within reach. And close in to this 
maniacal, pain-crazed, writhing giant the whale- 
boat is tossed about, thrown hither and thither 
on the blood-stained waves churned up by his 
thrashing flukes, and every instant is menaced 
by the crashing tail, the descending head and 
the terrible jaw. Striving like madmen to avoid 
destruction, handling their craft with superhu- 
man skill, escaping as by a miracle a score of 
times in as many seconds, the whalemen remain 
within the maelstrom of death until at last the 
cry of ' fin up ' roars forth and the whale rolls 
upon his side, — dead. 

^' If no other whales are in sight, chains 
are passed about his tail and he is towed 
to the ship as I have already described; but if, 
on the other hand, more whales were in the 
vicinity a small flag on an iron staff, and known 
as a 'waif,' is planted in the whale's body and 
the Aveary men start off to attack the next vic- 
tim ; perchance to make a kill without casualties, 
perhaps to have their boat stove in, and often to 
have bones broken or to meet with death. 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Although the whales were often taken close 
to the ships, yet the majority were finally killed 
miles away, and with the vessels hove-to and 
with only a few men to handle them it was es- 
sential that they should have a well understood 
set of signals to use in case of necessity. If a 
storm was brewing or darkness fell it was neces- 
sary to recall the boats. If other whales were 
sighted it was important that the boats should 
be notified. If one of the boats was stove the 
other boats must be sent to its assistance. 
These and a thousand other incidents might 
arise which the boats' crews must know, and 
Avhile they could see their ship and watch her 
for signals yet they might not be able to see 
other boats or whales and depended upon their 
ship's signals to locate them. Moreover, from 
the ship's mastheads, the boats and any whales 
in the neighborhood could be watched even when 
miles away, and when the hulls of the vessels 
were below the horizon from the boats. Very 
often, the distance was so great that signal flags 
could not be distinguished, and, as a result, the 
whalemen adopted signals given either with sails 
alone or by means of sails combined with yards 

83 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and colors with tlie addition of a ^masthead- 
waif ' which Avas a hoop covered with canvas and 
placed at the end of an eight-foot staff. As sev- 
eral ships were frequently in sight at the same 
time each had its own set or code of signals to 
avoid confusion ; but all were more or less simi- 
lar. For example, a flag at the foremast might 
mean whales in sight ; colors at half mast would 
signify that whales were between the ship and 
the boats; if the jib were up it might mean that 
whales were on the starboard bow ; the main top- 
gallant sail on the cap would tell the boats that 
whales were on the lee bow ; colors, or the waif, 
at fore and main masts sent news of a stove 
boat, while a signal at the mizzen would recall 
all boats. 

"Thus, as long as the boats could see their 
ship's spars, they were in touch with all that 
was going on and knew that they were under 
the watchful eyes of their skipper and that per- 
fect confidence could be placed upon him and 
his signals. 

" Many times, however, the night came on or 
a storm arose long before the boats could gain 
their vessel's side, or at other times they were 

H 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

towed so far that not even the lofty trucks of 
their ship were visible and on every side 
stretched the restless, tossing waves. In either 
case, the men were in grave danger and many a 
boat has thus been lost never to be heard from 
again, while others, after voyages of thousands 
of miles over the trackless ocean, have been 
picked up by another ship or have safely reached 
some distant shore. But that is a story which 
we must put over to another day." 



86 



CHAPTER VI 

WHEN tlie boys went to tlie museum on tlie 
following day, they found their friend 
studying an old, weather-stained book, while be- 
fore him on the table were piles of big volumes ; 
some bound in worn, rusty leather; others in 
discolored parchment ; a few in heavy, mildewed 
canvas, and all showing signs of hard usage, 
great age and frequent handling. 

" Why, those are logbooks ! " exclaimed Harry, 
as he glanced at the cover of the nearest. 

"Yes, whalemen's logs," replied the curator. 
" So far I've told you the most important facts 
about whales, whale ships and whalemen. About 
their lives and dangers ; how they capture, cut-in 
and boil down the whales and what the whaling 
industry meant to New England. Now I'm go- 
ing to introdure you two boys to the real life of 
the whalemen through the medium of their own 
words as written in these old logs. Of course, 

much of their contents are uninteresting and 

86 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

consist only of tlie records of work done, money 
expended, courses run, the weather encountered 
and similar matters; but, tucked in amid this 
mass of humdrum data, are stories as fascinating 
and thrilling, as full of adventure and bloodshed, 
as humorous and as pathetic as any books of fic- 
tion ever written. Moreover, by reading them, 
one may get a very good insight into the char- 
acters of the men, their hopes, fears and 
thoughts. From them, too, one may learn much 
of real value and interest such as the size and 
number of whales taken, the quantity of oil se- 
cured, descriptions of strange, out-of-the-way 
places and the habits of little-known people. 
Unlike the merchantmen, the whalers entered 
everything in their logs, whether it had anything 
to do with the ship, the voyage or their cargoes, 
for the whaleman's log was really a journal and 
everything which transpired ashore or aboard 
was set down in quaint phrases and sentences 
and curiously misspelled words. Even family 
matters, such as wedding anniversaries, birth- 
days, etc., were entered, as were such trivial 
matters as the killing of a fowl for dinner or the 
fact that a ship's cat had kittens. Moreover, the 

87 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

whaling captains made use of their logs for 
figuring up sums in arithmetic, in keeping memo- 
randums of business transactions and in writing 
letters, and many of the margins of their pages 
are as interesting as the real entries. In addi- 
tion, many were illustrated with pen and ink, 
pencil or colored drawings, for time hung as 
heavily on the officers' hands as on the men's and 
they wrote their logs as they would have written 
letters or stories. 

"Even those which were not illustrated are 
full of quaint pictures such as these. Here you 
see a black silhouette showing a sperm whale, 
while below it is a whale's tail, also in solid 
black, which indicates that a whale sounded, and 
beside this is a half whale horizontally placed 
which shows that a whale * drew ' or escaped. 
These were symbols printed from blocks carved 
by the whalemen and which were very useful, for 
not only was it easier to use this picture writing 
than to laboriously spell out and write words 
but by means of these symbols printed on the 
margins of the pages the reader could tell at a 
glance how many whales had escaped, how many 

were taken, just how they acted and the number 

88 





EXPLANATION — KINDS OF WHALES, SYMBOLS, ETC. 



Sperm Whale 
Bowhead Whale 
Right Whale 
Humpback Whale 
Sulphur Bottom Whale 
Fin Back Whale 
California Gray Whale 

Jaws of Right Whale showing whalebone or baleen 
Jaws of Sperm Whale showing teeth 
Symbols used by whalemen in their log books 



A 



D 

E 
F 
G 



Sperm whale (70 bbls.) 
taken 

Right whale or Bow- 
head (88 bbls.) 

Humpback whale (50 
bbls.) 

Grampus 

Porpoise 

Whale sounded 

Iron drew or whale losl 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

of barrels obtained from eacb, for tbe quantity 
of oil taken from each wbale was noted on a 
small white spot left upon the whale's body for 
that purpose. Most of these pictures were 
printed in plain black ink, but in one book here 
the captain used blue ink and added to the real- 
ism by painting in plumes of red spray to indi- 
cate that the whales ^spouted blood ^ or were 
killed. 

"Many whalers cruised for both right and 
sperm whales and had stamps to indicate each 
kind, while some of the logs are so filled with 
prints of porpoises, walruses, seals, sea ele- 
phants, grampuses, narwhals, etc., that they 
look like marine menageries or children's animal 
books. Nowadays rubber stamps of conventional 
design are used in place of the old-fashioned 
crudely carved wooden ones and are not half as 
interesting. 

" I have already said that the logs were prac- 
tically journals, but the offi-cers, and even mem- 
bers of the crews, often kept their private 
diaries and journals and in these we may often 
find entries which are even more interesting than 

those in the logbooks. Unfortunately, the 

89 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

wlialemen's families and friends often considered 
their old books of no value and many of the best 
and most interesting were lost or destroyed. I 
have tried to select some of the most interesting 
or humorous from those in the museum and I'll 
read the more striking or peculiar entries to 
you. 

. " Some of the logs were really pathetic and 
filled with sadness from end to end ; others were 
hopeful and jolly; others told of long cruises 
with only empty casks and bitter disappoint- 
ments as a result, while a few were penned by 
men evidently on the verge of madness. Here, 
for example, is the log of the New Bedford ship 
Morea which set sail on the 13th of October, 1853, 
and returned May 1st, 1856. Oddly enough, 
several other ships, which at various times set 
sail on the thirteenth of the month, met with 
tragedies of the sea and yet the whalemen never 
looked with superstition upon thirteen as did 
the merchantmen. The first entries in the 
Morea's log which were made by the skipper are 
of no particular interest, so we will sldp the 
pages until we come to the date of June 3rd, 

1854, where we find the entries signed by the 

90 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

chief mate, Beriah 0. Manchester. His first 
entry is as follows : 

" 'Remarks on board the Ship Morea, Sat., June 

3rd, 1854. 

* ' ' Strong winds from WNM and some fog. The 
first part ship head SE. Saw five ships. This 
afternoon Captain Peabody retired for a while 
and on being Called and at the tea table he made 
some very nnnsual remarks from him to make, 
askin the officers if they thought a man would 
be punished in the other world for making away 
with himself if he had nothing to hope for or 
could see no prospect of happiness before him. 
At night he went to bed as usual and was up 
during the night givin directions how to stear. 
At breakfast he seemed rather melancoUy, eat 
little and after breakfast come on deck but soon 
went below again. At 10 A. M. he sent the 
Steward after mee to come below. I went into 
the cabbin. Hee told mee hee had sent for mee 
to tell mee that hee was goin to meet his God and 
gave mee his reasons for doing so and some little 
directions about his things. After conversing 
with him for some twenty minutes or more I went 
on deck and communicated that hee had told mee 
to the other officers. 

' * ' Soon after wee three — the second and third 
mates and myself — ^went down and inquired if he 
91 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

had taeon anything to cans him to bee as hee 
was. At first hee said no only a spoonful of 
Brandy but soon after on being asked again hee 
said hee would not go with a lie for hee had 
taeon laudanum ; but as wee thought hee had not 
taeon enough to caus death wee let him bee. Hee 
now inquired how the weather was. At marideon 
hee got up, called for a light lit a cigar and went 
to bed again. So this affair stood at noon. Mid- 
ale and last of this day fresh SW winds and 
cloudy weather. One man sick. 

*' 'Remarks Sunday June 4th, 1854. 

" 'Strong South winds and some rain etc. At 
2 P. M. Capt. Peabody got up and wanted an ob- 
servation taeon but hee was in sutch a state hee 
was not able to note the time, Hee remained up 
till 6.30 p. m. while up gave his opinion on the 
prospect of whales at certain places then went to 
bed again. At 9 P. M. hee gave orders to lay the 
head yards back. At 2.30 a. m. hee gave orders 
to stear north as soon as it was light enough to 
man the mast head. At breakfast hee said hee 
could not eat anything Hee seemed in his right 
mind through the forenoon. At dinner time I 
asked him if hee could eat some dinner. Hee 
said his thoughts of food made him sick to his 
stomak but said the Steward was going to make 
some soup, Etc. 

92 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

*' 'Monday June 5th, 1854. About 2 P. M. 
saw two whales. Lowered three boats. At 3 re- 
turned on board without getting fast. While thei 
boats was off Capt. Peabody gave orders to make 
more sail and keep the ship near the boats and 
after wee got aboard hee asked mee how many 
whales I saw. At tea time he was in bed and 
did not get up. At 6.30 p. m. saw two whales 
the weather was too thick to lower. While look- 
ing at the whales their being no one in the cabin 
but the captain, wee heard the report of a gun 
and a musket ball come through the deck. We 
immediately went below and found Capt. Pea- 
body lying on deck in his room with his face 
blown ofl: from his chin to his eyes both upper 
and lower jaws entirely off. Hee breathed a few 
minutes and was gone. Middle part more moder- 
ate. At 1.30 a. m. saw ice, then at rest. At 
8.30 a. m. committed the remains of Captain Pea- 
body to the deep and A solemn right it was in- 
deed. Thus ends these 24 hours. ' 

" That," continued the curator, " is an excel- 
lent illustration of the way that the whaleman 
had of entering the most tragic events in the 
plainest and most cursory manner along with, 
the state of weather, the whales taken and simi- 
lar matters. Now let us turn from such a dole- 

93 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALEES 

ful log to cheery logs of good luck and pleasant 
voyages. This, from the log of the Nantucket 
ship Ohio is a good example. 

" 'Remarks on board the ship Ohio of Nan- 
tucket. Chas. W. Coffin, Master. Cruising ojffi 
Japan. Friday July 17th, 1834. 

" 'First part light breezes at S. W. Lie up 
N. E. under full sail employed repairing foretop- 
mast and staysail finished bent it wet the hold. 
At sunset shortened sail. Middle part much the 
same. At daylight commenced stowing down at 
9 A. M. saw a shoal of spern whales. Put off at 
11 A. M. struck, the boats among whales. N. Lat 
31.' 

"Here is another entry from the ship 
Montreal: 

*' 'In the Kamtskatkal Sea. F. L. Fish, Mas- 
ter. Thursday July the 15th, 1851. 

" 'These 24 hours commenced with a light air 
and cloudy from the south and westward the 
boats off chasing whales At 3 P. M. struck 2 
whales and turned them up 7 miles from the 
ship in a calm at 11 took them alongside with 
fresh breeze from the S at 1 A. M. all hands sent 
beloAv at 7 called all hands and commenced cut- 
ting in. Latter part puffy with a light air and a 
94 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

berg heavy swell from S. all hands employed 
cutting At 12 M had one whale in and hooked 
on to the other. So ends. Lat 60° 53' North.' 

" Wliat a contrast to these terse entries, tell- 
ing of good catches, is this log of the Minnesota 
written by Captain Clothier Pierce, a strange 
character apparently, for he always spoke of 
his ship as ' The Most Unfortunate Vessel in the 
Whaling Business ' and invariably cried when- 
ever he made an entry in Ms log. In fact, his 
entire time seems to have been occupied in dis- 
mal forebodings and tearful lamentations. He 
was sucli a sad and melanch.oly man that one 
really pities him, but his forebodings were 
wasted and ere the end of his doleful voyage he 
made a good catch. It would be tiresome to read 
all his entries but here are a few samples : 

*' 'Remarks on board the Most Unfortunate 
Vessel in the Whaling Business July 1, 1868. 
No signs of life here, nothing for us. June has 
passed and we get now where. No chance for us 
this season I fear. Three seasons in the North 
Atlantic too get one whale in this unfortunate 
vessel. ' 

******* 
95 



THE BOYkS' book OF WHALEES 

*' ' July 4th. Wind E. S. E. WiU the wind 
never change ? This is the Fourth of July a day 
of rejoicing with People at Home. But a sad day 
for us. No whales in The Ocean that we can 
Find, A Head Wind. No chance to do anything 
or to even get one whale. 

*' 'The Lord's Hand appears to be against the 
poor old Minnesota and all concerned in her. 
Will the Lord in His infinite Mercy ever suffer 
us to get one Whale? Employed sheathing the 
deck. Many are rejoicing to-day but our hearts 
are filled with sadness that this Poor Vessel can- 
not get a whale,' 

" ' July 12th. Nothing to be seen but sails. 
I fear the ocean contains no treasures for this 
unfortunate vessel. Nothing like sperm whales 
here. Picked up a barrel of petroleum oil. So 
the time passes and we get Nothing,' 

******* 

" 'July 13th, No whale this season for the 
poor Old Minnesota, The Lord will not suffer us 
to get one I am so wicked. Fate has ordained 
that we get nothing this season. May the Lord 
in His Mercy pour out a blessing for this un- 
fortunate vessel is my earnest prayer although 
I feel I am unworthy. May that Being that pre- 
sides over the destinies of men guide and direct 
96 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

me in all things I desire. Some fog. Bad 
weather for seeing. A perfect desert. The 
Pierce family are unfortunate. Looks desolate. 
Our ruin is inevitable. ' 

" Here, for variety, is the log of a ship whose 
steward was a poet and not only entered his 
verses in the ship's log which he kept but wrote 
very credible prose also. The ship was the 
schooner Emmeline of Mystic, Connecticut, on a 
cruise to the Croisette Islands for sea-elephant 
oil, and the steward's name was Washington 
Foster, — the date 1843. On Christmas day the 
schooner was at anchor at the Croisettes and to 
celebrate the occasion, Foster wrote the follow- 
ing parody on ' The Old Oaken Bucket ^ : 

' ' ' How dear to this heart are the scenes of past days. 
When fond recollection recalls them to mind. 
The schooner so taut and so trim like a miss in her 

stays. 
And all her light rigging which swayed to the 

wind. 
The old fashioned galley, the try-works close by it. 
The old blubber boat with six oars to pull it. 
The bunk of my messmate, the wooden chest nigh 

it. 

97 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

The old Monkey Jacket, the often patched jacket. 
The greasy old jacket which hung up beside it. ' 

" Then follows a long dissertation on the 
weather, the difficulties in reaching the shore 
and then the following : 

** *We had almost forgotten that to-day is 
Christmas day, the season of festivity and rejoic- 
ing at home and we can almost fancy we hear the 
halls resounding with the enlivening notes of the 
violin and the merry step of the fascinating 
dance, the tables groaning under the weight of 
poultry pies and all the delicacies of the season, 
and — but stop, the bark of that infernal sea- 
elephant had destroyed the illusion and recalled 
our wandering senses back to our anchorage in 
the cold, stormy, cheerless and desolate Croisettes. 
But no matter, 'tis true we cannot at present 
revel amid the strong exhilirating mixtures and 
quaff the luxurious wines of the season, being at 
present all hands of us ''teetotallers" but we can 
look forward to St. Helena and a full ship and in 
sweet anticipation lay back to a bottle of Cun- 
ningham's best and that is almost as good as 
though we had it. Moreover, we can, — listen to 
me now ye epicures who ransack ocean, earth and 
air to satisfy your pampered and vitiated appe- 
98 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tites, — we live, nay we feast, here in this remote 
and dismal corner of the globe, on luxuries the 
savoury flavor of which you can form no concep- 
tion. The richest and most delicious morsels of 
food that ever found their way into human 
stomach, such as sea-elephants' tongues, flippers, 
hearts, livers and tripe etc so that we are not so 
bad off during the holidays, but that we might be 
much worse.' 

" Evidently a man of some education and tal- 
ent and possessed with an optimistic heart and 
good spirits was this steward of the Emmeline, 
It seems as though he should have found a better 
fate than being steward of a grease-soaked 
whaler, and we must hope that he arrived safely 
at his Connecticut home and spent the next 
Christmas among the scenes and festivities he 
loved so well. Among the logs, too, we will 
sometimes find stories of mutinies, but such are 
very rare, for as a rule the mutineers destroyed 
ship and logs if they were successful. Some- 
times, however, the mutiny was nipped in the 
bud or the officers quelled it, as was the case of 
that on the ship Barclay, and fortunately, the 
Barclay's log is preserved. Although trouble 
began to brew soon after the ship sailed, yet as 

99 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

nothing serious occurred for some time we may 
as well skip tlie first few entries and begin with 
the date of Monday, October 6th, 1834 : 

" ' Commenseed with fine weather and light 
Winds from the South. We with all sails set. 
One Brig in sight at 2 o'clock. Lowered our 
boats to exercise the crew which was very neces- 
ury. At supper While in the act of shareing the 
vittals forward, one of the Crew began to fight 
with some of the Green hands, it being the third 
time. We put him in Rigging Not intending to 
flay him, but his sarsy tung caused him a few 
stripes with fore parts if a small head line affter 
which he acknowledge he was to blame. We then 
let him go forward where he made nomber 
threats. This promising youth's name is Brad-, 
ford Trafford. Mid part airs from the South 
The Blacksmuths very sausy, he being the worse 
• for Eum. Latt. part calmer, lowered the boats 
and chaseed Grampass for whales. 

" 'Oct. 8th. Nothing to be seen but the wide 
Ocean. Our old Rigging parts very often, it is 
not otherwise to be expected. So ends this long 
and Dismal day in hopes of a fare one. ' 

"But despite hopes, the ^ fare ' weather did 

not arrive and for days the ship was buffeted by 

100 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

' Heavy Gails ' as she worked her way around 
Cape Horn and into the Pacific despite her rot- 
ten rigging. Indeed, so rough was the weather 
that entries were not made in the log for a long 
time, the next one of note being dated Friday, 
April 29th, and reads as follows : 

" 'At 8 o'clock the Captain sent the steward 
forward to Call the Men Aft or one of them, to 
see their Meat Weighed ; but their reply was that 
they would not come. This was told the Captain. 
He immediately Called to them to come aft and 
repeated it three times and then went after them 
and took a Broom at one of the Blacks. They all 
refused to go aft but one said one of their com- 
plaint was that one pound and one quarter of 
meat was not enough and were very insolent and 
made their threats. They Now went Forward 
not wishing to see their weight of meat the said 
Black was insolent to the Captain when Coming 
Forward but was called to Go Aft again, his re- 
ply was that he would not and fled for the fore- 
Castle. While getting him up one of the Men 
Henry Ketchum came at the Gangway and inter- 
fered and Challenged the Captain and struck 
him. At this time the Captain took hold of him 
and dropped his wepon. The Fellow took it up 
and maid attempt to strike the Captain. From 
101 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

this he was told to go Aft but refused and went 
Down the Fore Castle. Took a sheath knife and 
said he would kil the first man that went down 
but afterwards delivered himself to be put in 
Irons where now remains in the Run. Thus ends 
in Peace.' 

" And now let me read you some entries from 

what is most probably the strangest and most 

humorous log in existence, the log, or rather the 

journal, of the bark Alexander , which set sail in 

1835 and which was kept by the cooper, Ephraim 

Billings, the captain and mates being so drunk 

throughout the voyage that they could not keep 

either log nor journal. We can imagine, after 

looking over his entries in the journal, that the 

poor cooper had a hard time of it, and while we 

must laugh as we read over his quaint entries 

and remarks, yet to Billings it was all a most 

serious and important matter. Funnily enough, 

too, the cooper never wrote in the first person, 

but always mentioned himself as if speaking of 

some one else, and we find such entries as, * This 

day is the birthday of Ephraim Billings, cooper 

of the bark Alexander/ or '■ The cooper remained 

on board, the others being ashore drunk.' 

102 



THE BOTS^ BOOK OF WHALEES 

' " During tlie first part of tke cruise the cooper 
tried his best to enter the daily events faithfully, 
but as he soon found that they were most monot- 
onous and consisted mainly of such items as: 
* The skipper came aboard drunk,' '■ The mate 
was very drunk/ ^All hands but the cooper were 
drunk/ he soon became discouraged or careless 
and only mentioned the unusual or remarkable 
things which happened, such as, ' The mate was 
only a little drunk/ ' Skipper not very drunk,' 
or, once in a great while, the startling informa- 
tion that ' The captain was not drunk to-day.' 
Only on one day throughout the entire voyage 
did he have anything to the officers' credit to en- 
ter in his journal and that was when the captain 
administered a deserved thrashing to a mutinous 
and insolent boy, and Ephraim remarked that 
^ This is the best deed the captain has yet done 
on this terrible voyage, pray God he may repeat 
the work often.' 

"Evidently Billings remained sober through- 
out the voyage, although he must have been the 
only member of the ship's company who was, for 
he never failed to make some entry each day and 

never forgot to note the anniversary of his birth, 

103 



THE BOYS* BOOK OF WHALERS 

of tlie death of Ms wife or of his wedding, and 
always underscored such things with heavy, 
black lines. He was apparently the only one 
who ever gave any thought to the welfare of the 
bark, and, reading between the lines of his jour- 
nal, we can see that the poor man was horribly 
homesick and lonely. With such officers and 
crew there is little wonder that no whales were 
secured, for captain, mates and men alike spent 
all their time in drinking and debauchery. At 
last, however, the cooper's troubles came to an 
end, for in a South American port the drunken 
skipper had him placed under arrest on the 
charge of mutiny. And this was, perhaps, the 
most humorous thing which occurred on the 
whole trip and the culmination of all the other 
acts performed by the befuddled skipper, for the 
* mutiny ' consisted of the cooper coming on deck 
in his stocking feet ! 

" Ephraim evidently found the cell in a South 
American prison far better and more comfort- 
able than his berth aboard ship, and when the 
captain at last became sober enough to realize 
what he had done and begged the cooper to re- 
turn to the bark, Billings flatly refused and in 

104 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

his journal, whicli he took to prison with him, he 
remarks that he did so, * As God knows I know 
too much of what goes on and what I may ex- 
pect.' Soon afterwards he was released and had 
a well-earned reward by being entertained by the 
ofQ-cials until he was finally sent home in another 
ship, a wiser if not a sadder man, to settle down 
ashore for life, for, as his last entry, he wrote, 
' Never to go a-whaling again, please God ! ' 

" These are but a few examples of the whale- 
men's logs and journals, and one could read hun- 
dreds of them and always find something of in- 
terest, of tragedy or of amusement in their 
pages; but the most thrilling incidents were 
never recorded as the logs of the vessels where 
they took place were either destroyed or lost. 
There are few professions in the world so filled 
with danger, adventure and incredible incidents 
as the whaleman's, and yet they were all taken as 
part of the day's work by of&cers and men. It 
would take volumes to relate all of the disasters, 
mutinies and tragedies which took place, but I 
will tell you a few of the most noteworthy and 
famous to-morrow." 



105 



CHAPTER VII 

"/^^APTAII^ NED told us a story of a 
^-^ wlialer," said Bob as the boys met the 
curator the next day. "It was about a man 
named Jenkins who was carried under the water 
by a sperm whale and afterwards was thrown 
into his boat." 

" Yes, and he insisted it was true," added 
Harry. " We didn't believe it at first, but Fa- 
ther said he had seen an account of it in a log- 
book." 

" Yes, the log describing it is preserved," the 
curator assured him. " The story of Jenkins is 
absolute fact, incredible as it may seem; but 
there are many other stories of whaling which 
are fully as remarkable, while many of the ac- 
counts of mutinies, attacks by cannibals and 
shipwrecks are as exciting and thrilling as any 
tales of fiction." 

"Ned told us another about a mutiny, too," 

put in Harry, " in which the men threw every- 

106 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

tiling overboard so the captain had to give up the 
cruise." 

" Yes/' smiled the other, "• that occurred on the 
Pedro Varela, — you can see her masts above the 
warehouse yonder if you look out of this win- 
dow, — it was a unique sort of mutiny and more 
amusing than serious." 

"Don't the whales ever attack the ships?" 
asked Bob. " I read a story once of a ship 
smashed by a whale." 

"Yes, there are several records of whaling 
vessels being sunk by mad or frightened whales," 
replied the curator. " I'll tell you of some of 
those and also of ships that were wrecked by 
running onto sleeping whales, but suppose we 
group the stories together and take up those of 
each class in regular order. 

" Of course," the curator continued, " the 

whalers had to face all the ever present dangers 

of the sea which confront ships and sailors of all 

kinds and, in addition, there were perils which 

beset the whalemen and which never menaced 

the merchant ships and merchant seamen. But 

notwithstanding this, and the fact that the 

whaleman's life was one of tremendous risk and 

107 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

that lie constantly took his life in his hands, the 
loss of life and of ships was smaller in pro- 
portion than in any other profession of the 
sea. 

" Collisions at sea, especially in foggy weather ; 
sinking of ships by storms, being driven on reefs 
or rocks; ships being disabled and abandoned; 
fire ; ships being lost by missing their course and 
running aground, are the commonest causes of 
loss of vessels and lives in the merchant service, 
and, oddly enough, very few of the whalers' 
losses were due to any of these. In fact, the 
dangers which are most feared by merchantmen 
never troubled the whalemen, and very few of 
their casualties were due to them. 

"And this is the more remarkable when we 
consider that the whalers never kept to well- 
known routes or seas as did other ships; that 
they visited the least-known portions of the 
world; that in a single cruise they often spent 
more time at sea than would fall to the lot of 
merchant sailors in a lifetime, and that their 
ships were not uncommonly in such a state that 
no self-respecting merchantman would dream of 

going to sea in them. 

108 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Perliaps it was partly due to the fact that 
men who daily faced death in a hundred forms 
looked upon ordinary hazards of the sea with 
contempt ; perhaps it was owing to the fact that 
the whale ships were heavily and strongly built 
and that seaworthiness was not sacrificed for 
speed or comfort, or maybe it was because the 
whalemen, — or at least the officers, — ^were such 
resourceful, splendid sailors. Whatever the rea- 
son, the fact remains that when we consider the 
great number of whale ships which were devoted 
to the business through more than tv/o hundred 
years, the long voyages they took, the risks they 
ran and the uncharted seas they sailed, the total 
losses were marvelously small. 

" Terrible indeed was the gale or storm which 
could dismast or injure the whale ships. They 
went unscathed through the most tempestuous 
seas; they weathered the hurricanes of the An- 
tilles and the typhoons of the Orient ; they fought 
the ice-laden, howling gales of Cape Horn and 
were battered by the bergs and floes of the Arc- 
tic. For years at a time they cruised amid the 
innumerable sharp-fanged reef of the Polyne- 
sians ; they were pathfinders among the unknown 

109 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

islets and submerged rocks of the South Seas; 
they skirted the shores of every continent and 
sailed on every sea and seldom did they touch 
bottom. And even when a ship did go ashore, 
her giant oaken timbers and thick planking 
would stand a vast amount of buffeting without 
breaking up. Of course, out of the thousands of 
whale ships which first and last have sailed forth 
from New England ports, many never were heard 
from again; many a ship left her skeleton to 
mark her last resting-place on some desolate reef 
or beach thousands of miles from home; many 
foundered at sea and many were destroyed by 
fire; but the majority held their own for genera- 
tion after generation of hardy skippers and still 
are strong, staunch and seaworthy to-day. Take, 
for example, the ship which first aroused your 
curiosity, — the bark Betsey, — she has just set 
forth on a three-years' cruise to the South Seas 
and yet the old ship is nearly one hundred years 
old, — she was built in Fairhaven, across the har- 
bor, in 1840, and for more years than either of 
you boys have lived she has been laid up on a 
mud flat with grass and weeds growing from her 

seams, and yet, now, she sets forth to brave the 

110 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

stress and storms of tlie vast oceans for three 
long years on end. 

" Scores of old whaling captains spent their 
lives at sea in the same ship and never had an 
accident and never lost a life. I know one old 
captain over eighty years of age who can boast 
that during all the years he has been to sea — and 
he started as a boy — ^his vessel never touched bot- 
tom, no man was ever lost or abandoned by his 
ship and that never had a single member of his 
crews been unfit for duty through accident or 
illness for more than a week at a time. More- 
over, he can truthfully claim that in all those 
years he never lost but one spar, that he never 
came into port without a full cargo of oil and 
that never a day has passed at sea when he did 
not personally go aloft. And you must not im- 
agine that his is an exceptional case. I could 
give you the names of at least fifty, — and there 
were hundreds who are dead and gone, — who 
could boast as much, or perhaps more, for the 
Yankee whaling skippers were born seamen, 
marvelous navigators, absolutely fearless, hard 
workers; men with iron nerve and muscles of 
steel, and men who never shirked duty. Through 

111 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

storm and calm, througli balmy breeze or howl- 
ing gale, when cruising on broiling tropic seas or 
working their way through the fog-shrouded ice- 
floes of the Polar regions, they piloted their ships 
a thousand times around the globe, following the 
whales across the seven seas and the five oceans, 
and ninety-nine times out of a hundred brought 
them safely back to port with all hands ac- 
counted for. In a general way, all the accidents 
that befell whale ships may be grouped in a few 
classes, although there were a few instances of 
unique disasters, while the losses among the 
boats and men were due to so many and such 
varied causes that each must be considered by 
itself. 

" You spoke of ships being attacked by whales, 
so it may be just as well to take up stories of 
such disasters first. Perhaps the most notable 
record of a ship being rammed by a whale is that 
of the ship Essew, of Nantucket, and, moreover, 
this is the first known instance of the kind, al- 
though doubtless other ships had met a similar 
fate previously, but as all hands were lost no 
records were kept and the unfortunate vessels 

were merely posted among the missing. And, in 

112 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

addition, the story of the Essex is one of the most 
fearful tragedies of the sea of which there are 
authentic details. 

" It was on the twelfth of August, 1819, that 
the EssGCG sailed from Nantucket under com- 
mand of Captain George Pollard, Jr., bound for 
the Pacific, and no unusual event occurred on the 
long voyage southward and around CajDc Horn. 
Reaching the Pacific, the EssecB cruised about 
until November 29th, when a sj)erm whale was 
sighted and at the call of ^ There she blows ! ' 
boats were lowered, the ship was hove-to and the 
men pulled lustily for the whale. The first boat 
alongside the creature was that in charge of the 
chief mate, but no sooner was he struck than, 
with a single sweep of his flukes, he stove in the 
frail boat and to save their lives the men cut the 
line. By stufQjig their garments into the holes 
in the boat's planking and by constant bailing 
the crew managed to reach the Essex without 
mishap. In the meantime, the captain and the 
second mate had struck a whale and were fast, 
and the chief mate made sail on the ship and 
headed the vessel towards them. 

" The mate was on the quarter-deck, and the 
X13 



THE BOYS' book: OF WHALEKS 

men were at work repairing their smashed boat 
when, within a score of rods from the ship, an 
eighty-five-foot whale suddenly breached from 
the water and, heading directly for the Esseos, 
crashed into her with terrific speed. 

" The monster struck the ship just forward of 
the foremast, and for a few minutes lay as if 
stunned by the force of the blow, and then, re- 
gaining its senses, he turned and swam off to lee- 
ward. 

"The first blow had sprung a leak and the mate 
at once ordered the pumps manned and also set 
signals to recall the boats to the ship. Hardly 
had this been done when the whale again ap- 
peared, thrashing the sea into foam with his 
flukes and snapping his gigantic jaws, and after 
remaining motionless for an instant, as if to 
gather all his strength, he again rammed the 
ship, striking her with such irresistible force 
that he completely staved in the heavy planking 
close to the catheads. 

" Seeing that it was useless to attempt to save 

the ship, the mate and the crew managed to get 

their injured boat into the water and scrambled 

into it. And not a moment too soon, for within 

114 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

two minutes after being struck by the maddened 
whale, the Essex went over on her beam-ends. 

" In a few moments Captain Pollard arrived in 
his boat and ordered the men to cut away the 
ship's masts in the hopes that the vessel would 
right herself and float, which she did. Then 
holes were cut through the decks in order to 
reach a few of the stores in the upper part of the 
hold, and for three days the boats remained by 
the sinking ship while they built up the sides of 
their boats and repaired the one stove in by the 
first whale. At the close of the third day the 
heavy seas had widened the gaping hole made in 
the ship's side by the whale and the Essex began 
to go to pieces. As nothing more could be done, 
the three tiny boats turned about, and, leaving 
their sinking ship to its fate, headed for the near- 
est land — the coast of Peru, fully 3,000 miles 
distant. 

" Think of it, boys ! Three frail boats, one of 

which had been already strained and smashed, 

adrift in mid-Pacific with barely enough water 

and food to maintain life for a week, — for they 

had been unable to obtain more, — and with the 

nearest land 3,000 miles away! But the stout- 

115 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

hearted men never lost courage and toiled dog- 
gedly at their long oars. Broiled by the tropic 
sun, their lips and tongues swollen and parched 
with the salt spray; with barely a spoonful of 
water a day for each ; faint and weak with hun- 
ger, they rowed day and night from the twenty- 
third until the twenty-eighth of November, when 
their bloodshot eyes were greeted with Ducie's 
Island, a barren, desolate speck in mid-ocean. 
Here there was no water, but a few shell-fish and 
sea-birds were found, and, forbidding as was the 
place, and while it meant certain death to re- 
main, yet three of the men refused to leave, as 
they preferred to die upon the tiny bit of land 
rather than endure the awful agonies of hunger 
and thirst in the boats. 

"Leaving Ducie's Island on the twenty-seventh 
of December, the boats resumed their almost 
hopeless voyage, and terrible as had been their 
sufferings before, yet they were nothing compared 
to the tortures the men endured on this awful 
row of 2,500 miles towards the Island of Juan 
Fernandez, off Peru. 

" Day by day the men died, the first being the 
second mate, who succumbed on the tenth of 

iia 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

January, and two days after his death the boats 
became separated, two of them, those of the cap- 
tain and second mate, remaining together until 
the twenty-ninth of January. By this time four 
other men had died and as fast as life left their 
bodies their comrades fell upon them, cut them 
to pieces and devoured the raw flesh like fam- 
ished wolves. Then, when once more on the 
verge of starvation, the captain ordered that the 
men should draw lots to see who should be killed 
to keep the others alive. Twenty-four days later 
the ship Dauphin, of Nantucket, appeared upon 
the horizon, and bearing down upon the weather- 
beaten whaleboat, rescued Captain Pollard and 
Charles Ramsdale, the sole survivors of the 
boat's crew. 

" In the meantime — on the seventeenth of Feb- 
ruary — the chief mate's boat had been sighted by 
the British brig Indian, and the three survivors 
it had contained had been saved, while the third 
boat never was heard from. The five survivors 
of this awful tragedy recovered, and in later 
years the Esseco's captain found employment 
upon Fulton's famous steamboat, the Hudson. 

" But the crews of other ships which have been 
117 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

rammed by whales had far more fortunate ex- 
periences. For example, there was the Ann 
Alexander, a New Bedford ship under Captain 
John Deblois, which set sail from here on Janu- 
ary 1st, 1858. Everything went well until the 
twentieth of August, when the chief mate struck 
a whale and made fast. No sooner did the crea- 
ture feel the smart of the iron than he turned, 
rushed at the boat with open jaws and with a 
single crunch smashed it to matchwood. Seeing 
the predicament of his men, the captain aban- 
doned the chase, and pulling with all speed to 
the assistance of the swimming men, dragged 
them into his boat and started for the ship. 

" Meanwhile, those on the Alexander had also 
seen the accident, and, lowering the water-boat, 
headed for the captain who, with his over- 
crowded boat, was in constant danger. Divid- 
ing the crew between the two boats the fearless 
men again attacked the infuriated whale, only to 
have him turn again and stave in the second 
boat. 

" With eighteen men crowded into the one re- 
maining boat, the craft was loaded to the water's 

edge, and Imowing it useless to attempt to cap- 

118 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

ture tlie wliale under such conditions, the over- 
loaded boat was headed towards the ship, which 
was now between six and seven miles away. But 
scarcely had they started before the maddened 
whale appeared, and with wide-opened jaws 
rushed at the boat and every one thought that 
their last moment had come. Then, for some un- 
exj^lained reason, the monster veered off when 
close at hand and tore past within a few feet of 
the boat. 

"As soon as the men gained their ship the boat 
was sent back to pick up the oars, fittings and 
equipment of the stove boats, and while doing 
this, the whale again appeared and the men, still 
undaunted by their hairbreadth escapes, once 
more started for him. But when almost within 
striking distance the whale sounded, the chase 
was given up and the boat headed for the ap- 
proaching vessel. 

" Standing at the ship's bows, the captain was 

watching his boat, when, close to the vessel, the 

whale rose suddenly, and before a word could be 

uttered or an order given, he had struck the 

doomed ship, staving a huge hole close to the 

keel amidships. Hastily tossing a few provi- 

119 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

sions into a boat, the craft was launclied and tlie 
men tumbled in just as tlie Alexander went 
down. 

" Even worse tlian tlie predicament of the Es- 
sex's crew was that of these men from the Aleao- 
ander, for one of their two boats had been stove 
and leaked like a sieve, and less than a day's sup- 
ply of water and food had been secured. Re- 
gardless of this, however, the brave and reckless 
men started to row for land, but their troubles 
came to an unexpected and welcome end far 
sooner than they dared hope, for two days after 
leaving the scene of their adventures they were 
picked up by the ship Nantucket. 

"And here it may be of interest to note that 
the mad whale which destroyed the Alexander 
was eventually captured and killed by another 
New Bedford ship. Five months after the whale 
had rammed the Alexander the Rebecca Bimms, 
of New Bedford, took a whale, and, to the sur- 
prise of the men, pieces of planks and timbers 
were found sticking in his head, and when he was 
cut-in, two of the Alexander's irons were found 
in his body. 

^' Now we will take one more story of a ship 
120 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

being attacked by a whale and then turn to other 
tales. This last is interesting as it is probably 
the most recent of such disasters, and fortunately 
for the men, they were near land and all were 
saved. In 1910 the bark Kathleen of New Bed- 
ford was cruising in the West Indies to the east 
of the Leeward Islands. One of the boats had 
struck a whale, but the iron drew, and the great 
creature wheeled and rushed at the bark. The 
force of his impact smashed in the vessel's stout 
timbers, tore away several feet of i)lanld.ng and 
made such an enormous hole that the ship began 
to sink rapidly. There was no hope of saving 
the Kathleen and all hands, including the cap- 
tain's wife who was on board, instantly took to 
the boats. Although the boats became separated 
in the darkness, land was not far distant and two 
reached shore in safety without loss of life and 
with little suffering, while the third was picked 
up by a passing vessel. Of the other two, one 
reached Barbados and the other Dominica. But 
we can imagine what their fate might have been 
had the Kathleen been sunk in mid ocean. 
" When you asked about ships being attacked 

by whales I mentioned that cases were known of 

121 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

ships running onto sleeping whales. You might 
think, with good reason, that this would be a 
very rare occurrence; but, as a matter of fact, 
it is not, and a number of cases are known of 
vessels, and usually merchantmen at that, strik- 
ing whales and being lost, for the result of strik- 
ing a mountain of flesh and bone the size of a 
large whale is much the same as when striking 
a rock or reef, even though the whale suffers the 
most. Probably the earliest account of a 
vessel ramming a whale is that of a ship which 
ran into a whale during a storm in 1640. Al- 
though the vessel was not sunk, still the force 
of the blow stove in several planks, six timbers 
and a beam, broached two hogsheads of vinegar 
in the forehold and put the ship aback or *in 
stays.' 

" Some idea of the fearful resistance offered 
by a whale when hit by a moving ship may be 
gained from the report of the captain of the 
Scotch merchant ship Cuban which rammed a 
sleeping whale while bound to Demerara in 1857. 
The Cuban was a five-hundred-ton ship deeply 
laden and under full sail, and yet, when she hit 

the whale, her headway was instantly stopped 

122 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and slie was brouglit up as suddenly and com- 
pletely as thougli she had struck the solid land. 

" That whales when so hit are killed or injured 
is proved by the case of the ship Herald of the 
Morning, which, in 1859, put into Hampton 
Roads leaking badly and reported that a whale 
had been rammed near Cape Horn. The whale 
had been seen to spout blood as it disappeared, 
which is a sure sign of fatal injuries. In this 
case, the blow of the ship against the whale was 
so great that seven feet of the vessel's stem were 
started and the bobstay was carried away. 

" Only a year after this, the Eastern City ran 
into a whale, and although this was a steamship 
and the whale was a mere baby only fifty feet in 
length, yet the steamer's cutwater was broken, 
while, in 1865, the schooner Forest Oak struck 
a whale between Boston and iNova Scotia with 
such force that every man on board was thrown 
flat to the decks and the foremast of the schooner 
was sprung and loosened. 

" Still more recently, in 1873, the three-masted 

schooner Watanga struck a sleeping whale while 

making a speed of about seven knots and tore 

away the false stem, split the stem, started the 

123 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

planks, carried away tlie bowsprit and did so 
much damage that the vessel barely could be 
kept afloat until it reached port. 

" In none of these cases was the ship actually 
lost ; but back in March, 1796, the ship Harmony 
ran upon a whale off Brazil and sunk imme- 
diately, although the crew escaped in boats. 

" Of all instances of ships being lost by strik- 
ing whales, that of the Union is the most inter- 
esting and remarkable, as well the one of which 
we have the most detailed account. 

" The Union set sail for Brazil from Nan- 
tucket on September 19th, 1807, and at ten 
o'clock at night on the first of October, while 
proceeding at about seven knots under easy sail, 
she unexpectedly ran onto a sleeping whale. So 
tremendous was the shock, that all on board 
thought the ship had struck a rock until the in- 
jured whale was seen. The ship was leaking 
badly and it was found that two timbers and the 
planking on the starboard bow had been staved 
in. Although the pumps were at once manned, 
yet the water continued to gain and two hours 
after striking the whale, orders were given to 

abandon the ship. As a heavy sea was running 

124 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

at tlie time and as there were sixteen men to 
man tlie three boats, one boat was abandoned 
and the men were divided between the other two, 
which were headed for the Azores about 600 
miles away. 

" The next morning, sails were rigged, but 
hardly was this done when the wind increased to 
a gale, the sails were destroyed and carried away, 
and to prevent the boats from becoming sepa- 
rated, they were lashed together and allowed to 
drift. 

" As the men had been compelled to leave the 
ship hurriedly, an inadequate supply of water 
and very few provisions had been placed in the 
boats and the men were put upon slender rations 
of sixteen small cakes and three quarts of water 
for the whole number for each twenty-four hours. 
With starvation staring them in the face and 
suffering unspeakable torments from thirst, they 
kept on and rowed, sailed and drifted for seven 
days and eight nights until on October 9th they 
reached Flo res Island and landed safely. 

" In every one of these cases it has been as- 
sumed that the whales were sleeping upon the 

surface of the sea when struck, but it is not at all 

125 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

impossible that in more than one instance the 
whales merely happened to breach just at the 
moment when the ship was close upon them. 
Oddly enough, probably fewer whale ships were 
destroyed by fire than by any other cause al- 
though the vessels were soaked with oil and were 
highly inflammable, while the sparks and fire 
from the try works always jeopardized them. I 
know of but one record of a whaling ship lost by 
fire at sea, however ; the story of the Providence 
ship Cassander and which bears the dark blot of 
almost inconceivable cruelty and inhumanity on 
the part of a merchant captain who refused to 
rescue the suffering, shipwrecked crew of the ill- 
fated vessel. 

" Sailing on November, 1847, everything went 
well until fire was discovered on board on the 
first of May, 1848. The flames had started in the 
forehold among some barrels of tar near the 
foremast, and at the first cry of alarm, two 
African negroes of the crew jumped into the sea. 
Although life lines were thrown to them they 
refused to seize them and one was drowned be- 
fore the second mate's boat could be lowered. 

This boat rescued the surviving negro, who then 

120 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

confessed that he and his dead comrade had 
started the fire, for fear that the whaleman 
would make them slaves, and that the other had 
shot himself before leai^ing overboard. The fire 
spread with amazing speed, owing to a half gale 
from the northwest, and soon realizing that it 
was impossible to save his ship, the captain or- 
dered three boats lowered, and manned by the 
crew of twenty-three men. 

" The location of the fire and the rapid spread 
of the flames had prevented the men from 
reaching the water-butts or provisions and 
there was but one biscuit and a gill of water for 
each day's rations per man. So stormy and 
windy was the weather, that the boat's sails 
could not be used and through the stupendous, 
breaking seas the men pulled the heavy boats for 
day after day until the seas calmed down, the 
wind fell and sails were set, when, four days 
after deserting their ship, a vessel was sighted. 
This proved to be a Spanish brig from Barcelona 
to Montevideo and with relieved minds and glad 
hearts the weary, starving, thirst-mad men drew 
alongside. Imagine their feelings, their utter 

hopelessness and their sufferings, when this in« 

127 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

human captain, — ^this monster in man's form, — 
ordered tlie shipwrecked men off, and despite 
their pitiful appeals and prayers, refused even to 
take the boats in tow or to allow them a night's 
rest or even to supply them with water or food. 
Utterly unable to make headway against the seas 
and wind which again rose the men lashed their 
oars together as a sea-anchor and through the 
next twenty-four hours rode to this drag. On 
the afternoon of the second day a tremendous 
sea swamped the captain's boat, and while the 
brave fellows in the other boats saved all the 
men, their precious stores of food and water 
were lost, as well as their compass and sextant. 
But luckily the next morning dawned with light 
winds and the men had the blessed relief of a 
heavy shower. Refreshed by this, and with re- 
doubled courage, the men again bent to their 
oars and three days later landed in Brazil. 

"Although the sufferings of the whalers in their 
open boats were very great, yet there are many 
instances on record of whalemen preferring their 
tiny cockleshells to other ships, and although 
spoken, they often refused to be picked up, but 

after securing water and provisions, — and pos- 

128 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

sibly their position, — tliey would continue on 
their voyage in the wlialeboats and usually 
reached port in safety. 

"On one occasion, a boat's crew was sighted by 
a Norwegian bark after they had been at sea in 
the open boat for nine days, and yet the men re- 
fused to go aboard as the bark was bound for 
England. On the following day, a whaling 
vessel saw them and when they went aboard they 
were so exhausted and dazed by privation and 
exposure that they did not realize they were on 
their own ship until two weeks after they were 
rescued. As recently as 1915, two boats were 
lost from the whaling schooner John Mania of 
New Bedford when off Hatteras. And although 
they saw several vessels, they stuck to their 
trusty whaleboat, and finally made New Bed- 
ford in safety. These men had been lost from 
their vessel through being towed out of sight by 
a whale. This was always one of the greatest of 
the whalemen's perils and probably more lives 
have been lost and more sufferings endured in 
this way than in any other. Very often, the men 
who were lost were picked up soon afterwards 

by other whale ships. Many times, too, the boats 

129 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and crews were lost and never heard from again, 
while, in a few instances, they reached civiliza- 
tion, or were rescued by passing vessels, after 
incredible sufferings and endurance. To be 
towed out of sight of their ship was an every- 
day occurrence, and if the weather were fair and 
it was not late in the afternoon, it worried them 
little, for even if they could not see their ship, 
the lookouts on the mastheads could usually lo- 
cate them, and they knew, moreover, that their 
captain would not desert them until he has 
searched the sea for days. But if night fell, if a 
storm arose or if they had been towed beyond 
sight of the lookouts on their ship the chances 
were all against them. Indeed, under such con- 
ditions, they were even worse off than men whose 
ships were sunk, burned or wrecked, for then the 
men at least could secure some provisions for 
their trip in the open boats, whereas, if lost when 
fast to a whale, only the meagre supjDly of bis- 
cuits and water, which are always in the boats, 
stood between them and the awful agonies of 
starvation and unquenchable thirst. 

" It was largely due to this that so few boats' 

crews which were lost and were not rescued soon 

130 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

afterwards were ever heard from, and yet, a few 
did manage to survive the most fearful priva- 
tions and reached land in the end. Such was the 
case with the men of the bark Janet of West- 
port. 

"It was on the twenty-third of January in 
1849 that one of the Janet's boats struck and 
ultimately killed a whale. A heavy sea was run- 
ning and in attempting to tow their prize to their 
ship the boat was swamped and caj^sized. After 
a terrific struggle in the seas the men righted 
their boat, but all its contents, including the 
precious biscuits and water, the compass and 
even the lantern were lost. The whale had been 
killed late in the afternoon and night was ap- 
proaching rapidly and although the crew made 
frantic endeavors to attract the attention of the 
ship to their plight they were unsuccessful. At 
last, realizing that no help could be expected, 
they lashed their oars across their water-logged 
boat, to prevent it from sinking, and worked it to 
the lee of the dead whale. Here they tried to 
empty the water from their craft, but without 
buckets or bailer, and with the huge seas break- 
ing over the whale and themselves they found the 

131 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

feat impossible, and cutting loose from the car- 
cass, started to work their water-filled boat to- 
wards the lights of their ship which were now 
dimly visible. Throughout the long, black night 
they labored, the seas constantly breaking over 
them and lashed into fury by the gale which had 
risen, and when at last the murky day dawned, 
they found all their Herculean efforts had been 
in vain and that they were steadily being carried 
further and further from the Janet. 

" Giving up all hope of being able to reach 
their ship, but still undaunted, the men turned 
their boat about and endeavored to rest and re- 
new some of their strength while drifting before 
the wind. All through that day and night they 
drifted at will of wind and waves, until, on the 
second morning, the wind died down and the 
men decided to capsize their boat and empty the 
water from it. In this they were partially suc- 
cessful, although in doing it one man was 
drowned while two others went mad, — crazed by 
the sufferings they had endured by being up to 
their armpits in water for forty-eight hours and 
without a morsel of food or a drop to drink in 

all that time. Without food or fresh water, with 

132 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

nothing but their oars, and with their boat still 
half full of water, their only hope laj in being 
picked up by some passing vessel or in the seem- 
ingly utterly impossible chance of reaching the 
nearest land which was Cocos Island off the 
South American coast and which they knew was 
over a thousand miles distant. 

"Not a single man could exert strength 
enough to pull one of the huge ash oars, but by 
dogged persistence and superhuman efforts they 
managed to strip the light, wooden ceiling from 
the inside of their boat and with this they made 
a sort of wooden sail. Then, resigning them- 
selves to their fate, the men floated before the 
wind across the trackless, ocean, propelled at a 
snail's pace by this sorry makeshift. 

" With no compass to guide them, thirst-mad 
and starving ; steering by the sun during the day 
and by the stars at night, they sailed onwards 
under a broiling tropic sun for seven endless 
days. In all that time no shower brought a drop 
of water to their relief ; no morsel of food passed 
their parched and swollen lips, not a sail glad- 
dened their bloodshot, aching, half-closed eyes 

until, at last, driven almost to madness by their 

133 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

sufferings they drew lots to see who should be 

sacrificed to keep the rest alive, and one of the 

men was killed and devoured ere his flesh had 

grown cold. And then, as though the Almighty 

had taken pity upon them, came a heavy shower ; 

but too late, for on the following day another 

man died. Again, on the ninth day, another 

blessed downpour furnished them with water 

and, as if sent by Providence, a dolphin actually 

leaped into their boat. Incredible as it may 

seem, miraculous as it may sound, yet nearly 

every day thereafter birds approached the boat 

and allowed the men to capture them, and thus 

fed by the hand of God, the men reached land on 

July 13th, after being twenty days adrift in their 

open boat. 

" Landing upon Cocos Island, the men killed a 

wild hog, slaked their thirst with the clear, cold 

mountain water and two days after their arrival 

were picked up by the Leonidas of New Bedford. 

Can you wonder, that after such experiences; 

after men have been saved when their case 

seemed so hopeless; after food and water have 

been sent them direct from Heaven as it seemed, 

that the whalemen never gave up hope, that to 

134 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

tlie last breatli tliey remained undaunted, in- 
domitable, unafraid? 

" And now kow about the dangers, the losses 
and the adventures which fell to the lot of the 
whalers while chasing and killing the whale. 
This, to you, no doubt, seems the most dangerous 
part of the whaleman's life, and so it is. But 
the dangers of the actual chase threaten only a 
few men and seldom indeed were more than one 
or two members of a boat's crew lost when going 
on or killing a whale. Indeed, it is one of the 
most remarkable facts about whaling that so few 
men were seriously wounded or killed in their en- 
counters with these monsters, for the boats were 
filled with keen-edged implements and weapons ; 
fluke-spades, hatchets, knives, irons and lances, 
— and these were thrown helter-skelter among the 
struggling men when an enraged whale stove a 
boat or tossed it high in air with a sweep of his 
flukes. Then, in addition, there was the danger 
of the whizzing line always liable to tear a man 
to pieces or drag him deep beneath the sea, and 
while there are several instances of men being 
killed or injured in this manner, yet considering 

the vast number of whales killed and the army 

135 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

of men engaged in killing them, accidents of any 
kind were rare. 

" One notable case, where the rushing line 
played havoc, was that of the mate's boat of the 
Parker Cook of Provincetown in 1850. The cap- 
tain and chief mate both lowered and the boat- 
steerer of the latter's boat soon got two irons 
into a huge whale. As soon as he was struck, the 
whale sounded, breached under the boat, cap- 
sizing it, and as he did so, a kink of the line 
whipped about the boat-steerer's leg. Without 
an instant's hesitation, the whale then turned his 
attention to the captain's boat and attempted 
to seize it in his huge jaws, but was stopped in 
his rush and killed with a bomb-lance by the 
captain. When finally rescued, the boat-steerer 
was found to have his leg nearly severed from 
his body and he died from his injuries soon after- 
wards. 

" Your friend Captain Ned has already told 
you the story of Jenkins ; but here is a story al- 
most as remarkable, — the story of a whaling cap- 
tain who was tossed into the water as his boat 
was stove by a right whale. No doubt, had the 

creature been a sperm whale, the captain might 

136 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

have been seized in the whale's jaws and killed 
ere he had a chance to fight; but with the right 
whale he had only the flukes to avoid. This, 
however, was enough, for the huge creature 
turned on the swimming man, who, to save him- 
self, dove under the whale and by swimming, 
dodging and diving strove to avoid the sweeping 
flukes and to escape from the crashing blows of 
the whale's head. Although buffeted about, the 
captain, by supreme efforts, managed to avoid a 
direct blow and though often driven far beneath 
the surface by the monster's strokes, he fought 
on for three-quarters of an hour while the boat 
hung off, unable to approach the maddened 
whale to strike him or to even rescue their skip- 
per. Knowing that the tip of the right whale's 
nose is extremely tender and that the slightest 
Injury to the nose will turn a whale of this kind, 
the captain drew his sheath laiife and manoeu- 
vred to bury it in his assailant's nose. At last 
he succeeded and the whale beat a hasty retreat, 
leaving the exhausted captain to be rescued 
more dead than alive by his companions, but 
strangely enough scarcely injured. No doubt 
this whale, as well as those which rammed the 

137 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

sliips and sunk them, was one of tlie 'mad' 
whales whicli were often reported by the whalers. 
Stories of such creatures were common and 
while they no doubt became exaggerated as they 
passed from mouth to mouth, yet there is no 
question that such creatures did exist, — ^mon- 
sters of unusual size, exceptional ferocity, in- 
credible cunning and great courage; — ^veritable 
whale warriors which sought to destroy lives and 
boats whenever opportunity offered and were 
often successful and escaped death for years, de- 
spite every effort of the whalemen to take them. 

" Such mad whales were easily identified when 
killed, for each ship which attacked them and 
left irons in their bodies left recognizable marks, 
of the encounters, for all the ship's irons were 
marked and when a whale was found with irons 
in his body the fact was always entered in the 
logbook. If a ship whose irons were found had 
met with disaster or unusual adventures, the 
report of finding her irons was spread far and 
wide. 

" Such was the case with the irons of the 

Alexander found by the Barclay, which I have 

already mentioned. Very often, too, a whale 

138 




£A 




l:^ 




EXPLANATION 



IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS USED IN 
WHALING 



1 Blubber Spade 

2 Iron or Harpoon used for whales 

2a How the iron toggles or turns in the whale 

3 Harpoon or iron used for porpoise 

4 Iron fired from a gun by steam whalers 

5 Darting gun and bomb lance combined 



A Bomb lance fired from barrel 

B Iron rod which fires gun when it comes in contact with whale 

C Ordinary iron with line attached 

D Gun barrel, about 20 in. long 

E Iron pole fitted to brass butt of gun 

F Lever for cocking gun 

G Lock plate and firing pin 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

would be killed with irons in liis body showing 
that he had traveled thousands of miles or that 
many years had elapsed since the irons had been 
buried in his flesh. For example, in 1815, Cap- 
tain Paddok of the Lady Adams killed a whale 
and while cutting it in discovered an iron which 
he himself had thrown in a far distant part of 
the Pacific thirteen years before. Moreover, the 
discovery of irons in whales killed often proved 
of tremendous importance to the whalemen, and 
it was the fact that irons thrown and lost in 
Davis' Straits were found in whales taken in the 
Arctic, that proved the existence of an open 
Northwest Passage. 

" So you readily can understand that if stories 
of a mad whale were spread among the whale- 
men and any ship's crew were fortunate enough 
to take him with the proofs in his body, it was 
not long before his capture was heralded 
throughout the whaling world. 

" Here, for instance, is the report of the Hec- 
tor of New Bedford which in October, 1832, low- 
ered boats in chase of a large whale. Before 
they could come within striking distance, how- 
ever, the whale turned and attacked the boats 

139 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

deliberately, staving one and tossing its crew 
into tlie sea. Pulling at topmost speed, tlie cap- 
tain's boat hurried to tlie rescue, whereupon the 
fighting whale left the struggling men, and dash- 
ing at the oncoming boat, opened wide his jaws, 
seized the boat, and in a perfect paroxysm of 
fury, chewed and bit it to pieces. Then, throw- 
ing the destroyed boat to one side, the whale 
turned on the Eector^s mate, — ^who was swim- 
ming for his life, — ^grasped him in his jaws and 
bit and chewed him horribly, finally letting him 
go badly wounded, but still alive. 

" While the monster had been thus busy with 
the captain's boat and the unfortunate mate, the 
other boats had hurried to the scene and without 
hesitation struck the whale and after a long and 
desperate struggle succeeded in Idlling him. 
Towing him to the ship he was cut-in and in the 
process various irons were found in him which 
identified him as a famous ^ mad ' whale which 
had already destroyed many boats and men. 
Among these was the chief mate of the Barclay, 
who had been killed three months before and the 
lost irons of the Barclay were found in the crea- 
ture's body. 

140 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Sometimes, oddly enough, the whales saved 
the; men's lives, — though unconsciously, — as was 
the case when men under Captain Huntling 
struck a big sperm whale off the South Ameri- 
can coast. This creature was also a ' mad ' 
whale and like the one which fell to the Hector's 
men, he seized the boat in his jaws and chewed 
it to bits. As his attention was thus occupied, 
the other boat rescued the swimming men while 
two other boats went in on the whale and got 
irons into his side. Turning on these new ene- 
mies, the creature crushed both boats with right 
and left snaps of his stupendous jaw and left the 
twelve men struggling in the sea. As many of 
these could not swim, their only hope was to save 
themselves by climbing upon the infuriated 
whale's back, where, straddling his hump and 
with one of their number clinging to his side, 
they remained until rescued by a fourth boat. 

" Six irons had now been lodged in his body, 
and fast to nine hundred fathoms of line, the 
whale was as full of fight as ever, and rushing at 
another boat he quickly destroyed it. Realizing 
the nature of their antagonist, the captain at- 
tempted to put an end to the whale by firing a 

141 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

bomb contaiuing six ounces of powder into the 
"wbale; but instead of ending his career, the ex- 
plosive appeared only to infuriate him the more 
and before the remaining boats could escape he 
dashed among them, tossed them aside, and with 
twelve hundred fathoms of line and seven irons 
disappeared with only the four ruined boats as 
the whalemen's reward for their desperate and 
unsuccessful battle. 

" But the whales were not the only ferocious 
and dangerous things which the Yankee whale- 
men were called upon to fight. Many of the 
South Sea islands were discovered and first 
visited by the whalemen and while many of the 
natives were peaceful others looked upon 
strangers only as prospective meals. Such were 
the cannibals which attacked the ship Awas- 
honks of Falmouth in October, 1835. 

" It was on the fifth of October that the ship 
hove-to off ^Namarik Island in the Marshall 
group in order to recruit natives who were sup- 
posed to be friendly. About noon the first crowd 
of islanders came aboard, and little dreaming 
that there was the least danger, the captain, the 
chief mate and second mate went below to din- 

142 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

ner, leaving tlie third officer in charge. As soon 
as the three had finished their meal, Mr. Jones 
went below and in about fifteen minutes returned 
and joined the others. At this time the crew were 
scattered over the ship, most of them being for- 
ward with one on watch, three aloft working on 
the rigging and one man at the wheel. 

" Like a bolt from a clear sky, and without 
even a cry to warn the white men, the natives 
suddenly rushed for the blubber-spades and seiz- 
ing the sharp steel implements fell upon the 
white men with savage yells. The first to fall 
was the helmsman, cut down with a sjjade; an- 
other spade beheaded the captain and the chief 
mate was slaughtered as he leaped into the fore- 
hatch. 

" Striving to gain a place of safety on the 
bowsprit the second mate rushed forward, but 
was dragged back and clubbed to death. The 
third mate, seeing his fellows butchered, seized 
a spade and hurled it harpoon-like at an ap- 
proaching savage who dodged it, and the mate, 
now the only living white man on deck, managed 
to reach the forehatch where the other members 

of the ship's crew had already hidden. 

143 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

"Altliough. tliey were afraid to go below and 
attack the men in the darkness, the natives crept 
forward, and having fastened down the hatches 
headed the ship towards the island with the idea 
of wrecldng her. While this was going on the 
three men in the rigging, and who of course had 
escaped the savages, were not idle; but crawling 
down as near the deck as they dared, they cut 
the ship's braces which let the yards swing-to 
and the ship, thus beyond control of the natives, 
drifted away from the shore and towards the 
open sea. 

" The crew and the third of6.cer, imprisoned 
below decks, had also been busy in carrying out 
a desperate plan to save the ship and their own 
lives. Making their way aft to the cabin, where 
they obtained guns, the men, by firing through 
the windows, managed to keep the savages at a 
distance, while the third mate placed a keg of 
powder on the upper step of the companionway 
with a train of powder leading to the cabin. 

" Touching this off, the keg exploded with a 

terrific report, killing and mutilating many of 

the natives, and so terrifying the others that 

when the crew dashed from the cabin to the deck 

144 



^HE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

every living native leaped overboard. At other 
times, however, the natives helped shipwrecked 
whalemen and saved their lives ; as was the case 
when the crew of the Canton of New Bedford 
touched at one of the Ladrone islands during a 
trip in their boats which has no parallel in the 
history of the whaling industry. 

"Moreover, the Canton was one of the few 
whaling ships which was lost through striking 
on a reef. In March, 1854, she struck an un- 
charted reef in the Pacific and went to pieces 
so rapidly in the heavy weather that the crew 
barely escaped in the four boats with but half a 
biscuit and half a pint of water per day for each 
man. Although there were islands within a 
comparatively short distance of the wreck, yet 
the weather was so bad, the seas so heai'y and 
the wind so high, that the men were utterly un- 
able to make the land and were obliged to head 
for the Ladrones where they arrived forty-five 
days after taking to the boats. The first island 
where they landed was uninhabited ; but the men 
managed to capture a few fish and birds and 
again set forth, headed for Tinium Island thirty 

miles distant. Here the natives mistook them 

X45 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

for pirates, but after considerable difficulty tlie 
men convinced the natives of tbeir identity and 
tbey were then allowed to go ashore and were 
furnished with water and provisions. But the 
whalemen had no desire to remain upon this mid- 
Pacific island, and after a brief rest, again em- 
barked in their tiny but staunch boats, and four 
days later, after a voyage of more than four thou- 
sand miles in their open boats, they reached 
Guam in safety. 

" Even the savage cannibals were not the most 
dangerous foes with which the whalemen had to 
contend, however. Although mutinies were rare, 
yet several have been recorded which, for 
brutality and cold-blooded, ruthless butchery, 
have few equals in annals of the sea. One of the 
worst was that which took place on the Glohe of 
^tiTantucket in 1824 and which was the more re- 
markable owing to the incredibly petty causes 
which brought it on. For over a year from the 
time the Globe had set forth from Nantucket in 
December, 1822, no trouble of any sort had been 
manifested on board the ship. The crew seemed 
contented and happy ; they worked well, and the 

officers seemed well-liked and were neither brutal 

146 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

nor overbearing. Tlien, one day, while the crew 
was skylarking on the decks, one of the boat- 
steerers, a man named Comstock, was thrown by 
the third mate, Noah Fisher, in a friendly wres- 
tling match. Exasperated by the taunts of the 
men at being defeated by Fisher, and enraged at 
being so easily worsted by the offtcer, the boat- 
steerer became so threatening and insolent that 
he was knocked down and slunk ^way, mutter- 
ing threats to kill the mate. Little heed, how- 
ever, was given to his threats, and the matter 
was entirely forgotten until the tragedy which 
transformed the peaceful ship to bloody sham- 
bles occurred. 

" T^Tiile the captain and chief mate were sleep- 
ing in the cabin on the night of January 25th, 
four men led by Comstock crept in and murdered 
both officers without even awakening them. 
Aroused by the sounds of the butchery, Lambert 
and Fisher, — ^the second and third mates — ^barri- 
caded their cabin door and refused to open it at 
Comstock's demands when the boat-steerer fired 
a musket through the door, one of the bullets 
wounding the third mate in the mouth. The 

door was then smashed in and Comstock^ in a 

147 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

futile blow at the second mate, lost his balance 
and fell inside the room, whereupon Lambert, 
with undaunted courage, seized the mutineer, 
who, after a short struggle, managed to escape. 
Fisher, in the meantime, although horribly 
wounded by the bullet in his mouth and suffer- 
ing terribly, seized a bayonet and lunged at the 
boat-steerer who promised to spare the mates' 
lives if they would surrender. 

" But no sooner had the officers thrown aside 
their weapons, than Comstock blew out Fisher's 
brains while one of his men pierced Lambert's 
body with a whale-lance. 

" Then, with the ferocity of fiends incarnate, 
the mutineers mutilated their victims, and while 
Lambert, who was still alive, begged and 
screamed for mercy the two mates were tossed 
overboard. 

" The ship was now in the hands of the muti- 
nous murderers and was headed for the Malgrave 
Islands where Comstock and his men proceeded 
to loot her. Breaching a keg of rum, the mutineers 
soon became intoxicated, and during the drunken 
quarrel that arose over the division of the spoils, 
Comstock was murdered. In the confusion that 

.14a 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

followed liis death, six of the men who had re- 
fused to take an active part in the mutiny, 
gained the ship unseen and cutting her cables, 
worked her out of the harbor and headed for the 
open sea. Reaching Valparaiso after a long and 
stormy trip, the six faithful whalemen delivered 
the Globe to the American consul and told of the 
mutiny and their escape. 

" Placing the Globe in charge of Captain King, 
and sending her home, the authorities' at once 
sent another ship with an armed crew to capture 
the marooned crew, but swift punishment al- 
ready had been meted out to them and all but 
two men had been butchered by the natives when 
the vessel reached the island. 

"Another famous whale ship mutiny, the cause 

of which was never known, was that of the New 

Bedford ship Junior which occurred in 1857. 

Sailing in July, the Junior rounded Cape Horn 

and spent the time until Christmas cruising in 

the Pacific. On Christmas Day, Captain Miller 

ordered spirits served to all his men, and leaving 

them apparently merry and enjoying themselves, 

went to his cabin. 

"At daylight the next day, one of the crew, 
149 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

Cyrus Plummer, accompanied by four men, 
armed themselves with muskets, made their way 
to the cabin and shot the sleeping officers, killing 
the captain instantly and riddling the mates 
with bullets ; but not killing them outright. As 
the wounded third mate attempted to rise, he was 
cut down with a whale-spade, while the second 
and chief mates succeeded in escaping to the 
hold, although the latter had six musket balls in 
his body. 

"As they returned to the deck after their 
bloody deed, the mutineers were met by such of 
the crew who remained faithful; but finding 
themselves outnumbered, and realizing the fate 
in store for them if they resisted, the loyal men 
gave in and joined the others. Now that the 
crew was in control of the ship they spent 
several days in drinking and merrymaking until 
it dawned upon them that, without the officers, 
they were helplessly at the mercy of the ocean, 
as not a single man in the crew understood navi- 
gation. 

"As their murderous fury subsided, and as the 
men grasped the predicament they were in, they 
shouted into the hold to the wounded, suffering 

160 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

officers promising to spare their lives if they 
would navigate the shij). Nearly dead with loss 
of blood and their uncared-for wounds and suf- 
fering from thirst and lack of food the two mates 
dragged themselves forth, and under the pistols 
of the mutineers, navigated the Junior to within 
twenty miles of the Australian coast. 

"Here, the mutineers rifled the ship of all 
valuables and provisions and taking to the boats 
headed for the land; but their freedom was of 
short duration and eight of them were promptly 
caught and hung. Before their execution they 
had decency enough to make a written confes- 
sion in which they exonerated the other members 
of the crew, while the ringleader, Plummer, 
turned State's evidence and thus saved his 
worthless neck. 

"Prom such dastardly deeds as these it is 

pleasant to turn to the accounts of adventures 

wherein the whalemen performed brave and 

worthy deeds for the sake of their fellow men. 

And such occurrences were far more common 

than mutinies, for the whalers, although rough, 

were, as a rule, most resourceful and brave men, 

accustomed to taking enormous risks and never 

151 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

hesitating to attempt tasks wMch to others 
would appear impossible. Indeed, a volume 
might be written on the deeds of prowess per- 
formed by whalemen, but one of them was so 
unique and well carried out that it will interest 
you. 

"Early in April, 1771, two Nantucket whale 
sloops were anchored in the harbor of Abaco 
Island in the Bahamas when a vessel was sighted 
with signals for help showing at her mastheads. 

"With their customary willingness to help, 
one of the boats was lowered and the captain of 
one of the whalers pulled to the approaching 
vessel and climbed aboard. The instant he 
gained the deck he was thunderstruck at having 
a pistol placed at his head while, in gruff tones, 
he was ordered to pilot the ship to the inner 
harbor or be Idlled. With the quick wit of a 
resourceful man, the whaleman replied that he 
would be willing to do so but was a stranger to 
the island and did not know the channel, add- 
ing that one of his men knew the way in. He 
was then ordered to point out this man who was 
called aboard and threatened as had been the 

captain, and knowing resistance would be use- 

152 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

less, he guided the ship into the harbor. But 
this man was no more of a fool than his skipper, 
and realizing that something was wrong, he 
brought the vessel to anchor where a point of 
land separated her from the two whaling sloops. 
The two whalemen were then released and pro- 
ceeded to their ship where the two Yankee skip- 
pers held a hurried conference as to the best 
method of outwitting and capturing the crew of 
the strange vessel whom they were convinced 
were either pirates or mutineers, as the two 
whalemen had noticed that a man was held un- 
der an armed guard in the cabin. 

" The two skippers soon decided upon the 
course to follow and sent an invitation to dinner 
to the captain of the strange ship. The invita- 
tion was quickly accepted and the so-called cap- 
tain of the stranger soon arrived accompanied 
by his boatswain and bringing with him the un- 
armed man who had already been seen in the 
cabin. Scarcely had they stepped on board, be- 
fore they were surrounded, seized and securely 
bound by whalers who had been hidden awaiting 
a signal from their skipper. 

" The whalemen then learned, from the man 
153 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

wlio had been held a captive, that he was the 
real commander of the vessel which was from 
Bristol, Rhode Island, and had sailed from that 
port for Africa. There he had taken on a cargo 
of slaves, had carried them to the West Indies 
and had set sail for home, when his crew 
mutinied, seized the ship and decided to become 
pirates. As no member of the crew understood 
navigation, they had spared his life and that of 
the mate, keeping the latter a prisoner in the 
hold and compelling their former captain to 
navigate the vessel under guard. 

" Telling the pirate boatswain that if he would 
return to his ship, free the former mate and aid 
the whalemen in recapturing the vessel, they 
would try to have him pardoned for his part in 
the mutiny, they told him he was free to go. 
But before he left they warned him that within 
two hours' sail they knew where a British man- 
o'-war was at anchor, and that if he did not do as 
he was told they would sail to the warship, se- 
cure an armed force and return and capture the 
pirates. 

"As the whalemen had expected, the pirate 
boatswain made no sign of complying with their 

154: 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

orders and one of tlie Nantucket sloops at once 
Moisted sail and stood out from the harbor. As 
they approached the mutineers' ship, the latter 
hurried about, shifting their guns to the port 
side of their ship where the whaling vessel was 
about to pass and preparing to sink her as soon 
as she was within range. But the Yankee 
skipper was not to be caught napping and when 
almost within gunshot, he suddenly jibed and 
swept past the other side of the ship and out of 
range long before the furious mutineers could 
move their cannon across their decks. Leaving 
the harbor, the little JSTantucket sloop sailed out 
of sight and standing off and on beyond a point 
of land, waited several hours and headed back 
towards the harbor with a signal at the masthead 
as if they had spoken a man-o'-war, and with red 
cloths wrapped about the crew to resemble the 
red coats of British marines. 

" Seeing the sloop sailing boldly towards them, 
and fully believing that the whalemen had ful- 
filled their threats, the mutineers tumbled into 
their boats, and pulling with all haste to the 
shore, where they sought to escape, but were 

quickly captured by the aid of the inhabitants. 

155 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

"With, the mutineers safely secured and tlie 
released mate in charge of a crew of whalemen, 
the Nantucket vessels convoyed the ship to Nas- 
sau, where the whalemen were paid a reward of 
|2,500 for what they had done, and the leader of 
the mutineers was hung. 

"And now, that we have had stories of so many 
of the adventures of the whalemen, so many 
tragedies of the sea, so many accounts of disas- 
ters and escapes, perhaps you will be interested 
in a brief description of the greatest disaster that 
ever occurred to the whaling fleets of New En- 
gland. Of all the perils of the sea which men- 
aced the whaling ships, the greatest was that of 
being crushed in the Arctic ice, and more ships 
were lost in that way than by all other accidents 
put together. Twice, in 1871 and in 1876, whole 
fleets of ships were destroyed in this way, and 
while the loss in 1876 was large, — twenty vessels 
being crushed, — ^yet it was nothing as compared 
to the catastrophe of five years earlier when thir- 
ty-two ships were destroyed at one time with a 
monetary loss of over two million dollars to New 
Bedford alone and which left over twelve hun- 
dred persons shipwrecked on the Arctic ice fields. 

156 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

It was by far tlie greatest blow the industry ever 
suffered and it stands out as one of the most mar- 
velous, if not tbe most remarkable, of all known 
maritime disasters, for not a single life was lost, 
despite the dangers and rigors of the Arctic and 
the fact that twelve hundred and nineteen souls, 
— ^men, women and children, — ^were carried in 
open whaleboats for nearly one hundred miles 
through ice-laden, storm-beaten, freezing seas in 
order to reach safety. 

" It was in May, 1871, that the Arctic whaling 
fleet gathered south of Cape Thaddeus waiting 
for the closely-packed ice to open and permit 
them to make their way to the more northerly 
grounds. By the middle of June the vessels had 
reached Behring Straits, and through July the 
ships were husj whaling until during the latter 
part of the month, when the ice drifted and the 
fleet headed east, following the ice through open 
leads until within a short distance of Icy Cape. 
Here a few of the ships anchored, as the ice still 
prevented them from reaching the Blossom Shoal 
grounds, but by the sixth of August there was 
clear water and several of the vessels set sail and 

a few days later nearly all of the fleet was north 

157 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

of the shoals and had worked to the northeast of 
Wainwright Inlet, where eight vessels anchored 
or made fast to the ice and all were busy whal- 
ing. But on the eleventh of August the wind 
shifted suddenly and set inshore, nipping several 
of the boats which were cruising for whales, and 
forcing the ships to get under way. Several of 
the boats were stove, but all were saved by pull- 
ing them on the ice close inshore, and on August 
13th the vessels reached Point Belcher and 
waited for a northeast wind to carry off the ice. 
But instead of coming from that quarter, as they 
expected, the wind came from the west, driving 
the ice ashore and forcing the ships up a narrow 
strip of water less than half a mile in width and 
close to the land. Here they were fast, but as 
whales were everywhere in the open water, the 
chase continued, the blubber being cut-in at the 
edge of the ice-pack and carried over it to the 
ships. 

" On August 25th the long-looked-for north- 
easter arrived, driving the pack eight miles off 
the shore, and the Eskimos advised the whale- 
men to make the most of the open water while 

they had a chance. The whalemen, however, re- 

158 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

mained to capture whales and four days later the 
wind shifted, the ice again came driving inshore, 
and several ships were caught in the pack. 

" The first loss to the fleet occurred on Septem- 
ber 2d, when the Comet was crushed, her crew 
escaping to the other ships. On the seventh of 
the month the bark Roman was caught and 
crushed ; the next day the famous old AwasJionks 
was destroyed and the crews of the ships, realiz- 
ing their predicament, set to work sheeting their 
boats and building up the gunwales to protect 
them from the ice which now was a vast, un- 
broken field for eighty miles. 

" It was now hopeless to expect any of the im- 
prisoned ships to escape. Each day more vessels 
were stove or crushed; the ice, — grinding and 
crushing together by the force of the gale and 
seas, — rose and budded in miniature mountains, 
lifting the big whale ships high in air, toppling 
them on their sides; tossing them about like 
toys and splitting their stout timbers and 
planks like pipe stems. Knowing that their 
only hope lay in reaching the ships further 
south, a boat was sent out to search for 

the other vessels and upon their return re- 

159 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

ported that six ships, besides the Arctic ^ were 
still clear and would wait to receive the fugitives 
if they abandoned their ships at once. There 
was nothing else to be done, so the boats were 
provisioned, the flags were set union down on the 
doomed ships, and loaded with men and a num- 
ber of women and children, the flotilla set forth 
on the brave but unspeakably dangerous at- 
tempt to reach the ships beyond the ice-pack and 
eighty miles away. At the end of the first day a 
landing was made on a narrow beach at the foot 
of some sand hills and here the boats were 
turned up and transformed into shelters for the 
women and children by stretching canvas over 
them. On the second day Blossom Shoals were 
reached and the fugitives caught sight of the 
waiting vessels beyond a tongue of ice five miles 
distant. 

" But to any one but a whaleman it would have 
appeared suicidal to attempt to reach them. The 
seas were running mountain high, and a terrific 
gale was blowing, while the spray froze instantly 
wherever it touched. Sheltered by the protect- 
ing strip of ice, the boats constantly shipped 

water; but as soon as this was passed every sea 

160 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

broke into the boats, provisions were soaked, tlie 
occupants were drenclied to the skin in the icy 
brine, and to prevent the boats from sinking, 
they were compelled to bail for their lives. So 
terrific was the gale, so tremendous the seas, that 
the huge anchor chain of the Arctic was snapped 
as if mere rope yarn. And yet the tiny cockle- 
shells, with their jjrecious, human freight, bore 
on; — now hidden from the anxious watchers on 
the ships between the huge green billows; anon 
carried skyward on their foaming crests; but 
steadily drawing ever nearer to safety, — the 
women never complaining, the men never falter- 
ing until, without the loss of a single soul, the 
staunch whaleboats weathered the Arctic tem- 
pest and the twelve hundred and nineteen human 
beings reached the waiting ships and safety. 
Surely might the whalemen be forever proud of 
such a record of heroism, courage and seaman- 
ship ! " 



16X 



CHAPTER VIII 

""V^OU miglit think that the lot of the whale- 
•*■ men who cruised in tropical and semi- 
tropical seas in pursuit of sperm whales and 
visited palm-fringed islands abounding in lus- 
cious fruits, fresh vegetables and friendly natives 
was far preferable to the life of the arctic whalers 
who cruised in the frozen polar seas, whose ships 
picked their way cautiously and in ever constant 
peril among ice-jloes and icebergs and who spent 
the long, bitterly cold, arctic winters in the deso- 
late ice-bound land. Frozen fast in some bay or 
sound, the whale ships remained throughout the 
winter and not only through one, but often 
several winters, only returning when at last the 
ship's hold was filled with oil and bone. 

"But oddly enough, the life on an arctic 
whaler held many attractions and appealed far 
more strongly to many men than sperm whaling 
or ocean cruising. 

" In the first place, the work was easier if no 

less dangerous, it was varied and there were con- 

162 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

stant clianges in scene and occupation ; the food 
was better and for long uiontlis during the winter 
there was practically nothing for the men to 
do but amuse themselves and pass the time as 
they saw fit. 

" Once the ship was in the grip of the ice and 
frozen in until spring, whaling of course was out 
of the question and while there were seals and 
walrus to be caught through the ice, polar bears 
and musk-oxen to be hunted, yet this was mere 
sport and recreation compared to hunting, kill- 
ing, cutting in and trying out the whales. 

" Moreover, the men had company, for the 

Eskimos always gathered about a whale ship, not 

only because they could earn reward in the form 

of trinkets, tools, food and supplies in return for 

their aid in whaling and in exchange for bone, 

hides, skin and meat which they brought in, but 

because they were sure of having a glorious time 

and breaking the dull monotony of their lives by 

visiting and being visited by the whale men. 

Often they would come from far distant points, 

traveling in their tiny skin kyaks or by dog sledge 

and camping near the whale ship until quite a 

good sized village had grown up. In the winter 

163 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

they built their igloos of snow and ice and in the 
summer erected their skin tents. And they were 
always welcomed by the whalemen and were well 
treated and fairly dealt with. In fact, the whal- 
ers depended in large measure upon their dusky 
skinned Eskimo friends for the success of their 
trips to the arctic. 

" The Eskimos were skilled boatmen and whal- 
ers ; they knew where schools of right whales or 
bowheads were to be found, they could supply 
the ships with meat, salmon, ducks, fish and other 
food, they provided the skins and made the fur 
garments which the whalemen used and they 
brought in walrus ivory, seal skins, musk-ox and 
bear hides, white and blue fox pelts and many 
other trophies of the chase which were frequently 
of far greater value than the catch, of oil or bone. 

" Many of the Eskimo men were regularly em- 
ployed by whaling ships year after year and, by 
some intuition or sixth sense, seemed to know 
just when a ship would arrive and where they 
would find it and would be on hand ready and 
waiting to join the crew and go a-whaling. 

"Another reason which led whaling captains 
and ship owners to seek the arctic grounds was 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

that a sliip could carry a smaller crew and could 
save many dollars in the north. With only 
enough men to handle the ship, or perhaps one 
boat, they could sail to the Arctic and there take 
on a gang of Eskimos. These men were hard 
workers, they were absolutely fearless where 
boat work or whaling was concerned, they knew 
how to handle the irons and lances, they were 
thoroughly familiar with the habits of the whales 
and they were adepts at stripping off the blubber, 
cutting out and dressing the bone and boiling the 
blubber. 

" Moreover, they worked for practically noth- 
ing and even the poorly paid and systematically 
robbed derelicts who formed the crews of whal- 
ing ships were paid fortunes in comparison to the 
wages of the Eskimos, for these people had no use 
for money — they could not spend it if they had 
it — ^they had no idea of the value of their services 
or the pelts and hides brought in and would only 
accept trade goods in exchange for their work 
and their products. The cheapest and simplest 
things would serve for their needs and the arctic 
whalers always carried a large stock of beads, 

bright colored calico, hatchets, knives, cheap 

165 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tobacco and pipes, mirrors, geegaws, scrap iron 
and files. An Eskimo, like a primitive Indian, 
only values an article in proportion to how much 
lie needs it. If he wants arrow or harpoon tips, 
some scrap sheet iron and a file are worth more 
in his eyes than any other article with an in- 
trinsic value many times greater. If his wife or 
wives wanted beads or calico a polar bear skin or 
a dozen fox pelts which were superfluous at the 
time were not worth as much as fifty cents' worth 
of the coveted articles. If the Eskimo had an 
ancient muzzle loading musket but no ammuni- 
tion, powder and lead were ample payment for 
weeks of toil. But there was one trade article 
which the whalers never took to the Eskimos and 
that was soap. With all their good points the 
Eskimos are unspeakably filthy and no one but 
the grease-soaked whalemen accustomed to the 
dirt, grime and stench of whaling could have hob- 
nobbed with them for months at a time save 
through dire necessity. 

" But such matters never troubled the whale- 
men, even if they ever thought of it, and because 
the Eskimos never bathed nor washed and when 

the layer of filth upon their skins became too 

166 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

thick, removed it by plastering on blood and then 
scraping it off when dry, meant nothing in the 
eyes of the whalemen. Indeed, I doubt if the 
whalers had much more use for soap than their 
dark-skinned companions, for there were no 
facilities for either bathing or washing ; the only 
water available was obtained from melted snow 
and the men wore the same clothes and furs for 
months at a time without ever removing them. 
Nevertheless, or rather I might say because of 
this, they got along on very friendly terms with 
the Eskimos and had gay and hilarious times. 
Games and competitions in strength, wrestling, 
jumping and other athletic sports were held on 
the ship's deck, dances and entertainments were 
given and holidays, such as Christmas, Thanks- 
giving, Washington's Birthday, etc., were cele- 
brated in fine style. 

" The arctic bound whaler timed his ship's de- 
parture so that he reached the northern seas — 
the Straits of Belle Isle if headed for the Hud- 
son's Bay district or Behring Straits if for the 
western arctic gi'ounds, — ^just as the ice was 
breaking up and the channels opening in spring. 
Skilled and daring in navigating the ice-fiUed 

167 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

seas, tlie whalemen worked their ships between 
the floes and bergs and among the jjack ice until, 
by the time summer came on, they were well 
north and in the desolate seas and straits far 
beyond the last outposts of civilization. Here, 
at some well known point, they would pick up 
their Eskimo crew and cruise about for whales. 
Sometimes too they would anchor close to shore, 
establish try works on land and go a-whaling in 
their small boats accompanied by their Eskimo 
friends. This was a favorite method in Hudson's 
Bay and was thoroughly enjoyed by the men, for 
to sail a light, swift whale boat on a hunt for 
whales is not by any means a hard or unpleasant 
job. 

" Then, when the short summer began to wane, 
the ship was prepared for the long, bitterly cold 
winter. Sails were unbent, spars sent down, the 
ship was secured in some sheltered cove or inlet 
and a rough board house was constructed over the 
decks to serve as the home of the crew during the 
frigid winter night while the ship was gripped in 
the relentless ice that would stretch away for 
hundreds of miles covering sea and land. 

"Within this big deck house, bunks were ar- 
168 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

ranged, tables erected and stoves set up and when 
at last the ice began to cover the sea and bay 
and the sea birds, ducks and geese bad all de- 
parted for tlieir winter homes in the south and 
even the hardy caribou and musk-oxen moved 
southward the whalers were snug and comfort- 
able. If all went well the shij) would be frozen 
in gradually and as the ice thickened she would 
be lifted bodily, forced up by the pressure, for 
the whale ship's massive oak ribs and planks were 
designed and built to withstand anything. At 
times, however, matters went far from well and a 
sudden pinching of ice or an inshore wind or 
storm or a cataclysm of the frozen mass would 
break the strongest ship as though she were an 
egg-shell. Perhaps it might leave her fit for 
habitation until the spring thaws came and the 
ice broke up, or again it might utterly destroy 
her. In the latter case the whalemen were willy- 
nilly compelled to desert the ship and wait ashore 
in hastily constructed camps until the sea was 
again open. Then by whale boat and canoe or 
by sledge if necessary they would journey count- 
less miles over the bleak and dismal land to some 

other whale ship of whose whereabouts they 

169 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

knew. And more than once it happened that the 
other ship also had suffered and both crews were 
marooned for a year or more until rescued by 
some other whaler. Sometimes the newcomer 
would be a Scotch or Scandinavian vessel just 
starting on a voyage and several years might 
elapse before the shipwrecked men, on their new- 
found home, would be carried to Scotland or 
Norway and later work their way home after they 
had been mourned as dead for years. 

" But as a rule, the whale ships suffered but 
little from the ice. Even if badly stove or crushed 
they would frequently manage to get home safely, 
for whale ships will stand an incredible amount 
of rough usage and although they might leak like 
a sieve the whalers manage to get them into port 
at last. One whaling captain who has spent 
many years in the Arctic told me of how his ship 
was once pinched in the ice until her decks actu- 
ally buckled up above the bulwarks, and yet, after 
the ice gave way, she settled back and was sailed 
home to New London apparently little the worse. 
But in her log, in terse matter-of-fact sentences 
and misspelled words, you can read between the 

lines and see the heroic measures, the unremit- 

170 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

ting toil, the ceaseless vigilance and tlie almost 
siiperhmuan endurance wMch were required to 
bring the old ship from the far-off Arctic down 
through ice-filled, tumultuous seas to Long Island 
Sound. Day and night the men labored steadily 
at the old-fashioned pumps, sail had to be short- 
ened in order to avoid straining her already 
cracked and splintered planks and timbers, every 
time she met with heavy seas her seams opened 
and the water poured in almost as fast as the men 
could pump it out and over and over again it 
actually gained on them and it was a race for life 
to see if she could be kept afloat. Luckily, how- 
ever, an old whale ship is so thoroughly grease 
soaked that it takes a large crack to allow much 
water to enter while the exuding oil makes a 
slick all about her and prevents the seas from 
breaking. Also, the cargo of oil is not injured 
by water and is buoyant and so, although the 
ship barely crawled along under her reduced 
rigging and often drifted far off her course, yet 
the men kept doggedly on. Any merchant ship's 
crew and captain would have abandoned her at 
once and would have taken to their boats rather 

than take the slim chance of keeping their ship 

171 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

afloat. But not so the hardy whalemen. They 
had worked hard and had been through three 
winters in the arctic to secure the full cargo of 
oil and the many tons of whalebone in the hold 
and the great bales of bear, musk-ox and fox hides 
worth thousands of dollars and as long as the bat- 
tered old hulk would stay on top of the sea they 
had no intention of leaving her, but manfully 
stuck to their ship with success at last when, half 
filled with water, leaking at every seam, weather- 
beaten and gray, but without a man lost she 
sailed triumphantly into New London harbor. 

" The captain of this same ship was a very 
observant and unusually wide-awake man and 
interested in many matters aside from whaling. 
He brought back large collections of bird sldns, 
mammals, birds' eggs, minerals and other speci- 
mens for the museums of the country; he dis- 
covered and described a new and hitherto un- 
known tribe of Eskimos dwelling on one of the 
unexplored islands in Hudson's Bay and he knew 
enough to secure a good collection of their handi- 
work and a fairly complete vocabulary of their 
language. Not only that, but having a small 

camera on his ship he managed to secure many 

172 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

very valuable and interesting photographs which, 
were develoj)ed under almost insurmountable 
difficulties. 

" His logs are most fascinating reading, for he 
did not confine himself to matters of seamanship, 
statements of catches, remarks about the 
weather, etc., but filled pages with descriptions of 
Eskimo life and habits, stories of hunts, tales of 
his adventures and even found space and time to 
write down translations of innumerable Eskimo 
fairy tales and folk-lore together with crude 
illustrations of the stories drawn by the Eskimos 
themselves. Indeed, his logs are of tremendous 
scientific value and for this reason were acquired 
by one of our largest museums. 

" In one of these logs too you may get a very 
good insight into the life of the whalers in the 
arctic, for he describes in minute detail all the 
games and contests of the Eskimos and a Christ- 
mas celebration. No doubt, the rough whalemen 
took as much pleasure and as keen a delight in 
this as do children with their Christmas trees at 
home, for while a tree was out of the question the 
resourceful whalers built a most fitting substi- 
tute in the form of a miniature whaling ship with 

173 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

its yards and masts as gaily decorated witli 
candles, colored ribbons and trinkets as any one 
could desire while its hull served to hold the 
presents intended for both the whalemen and 
their Eskimo guests. And no one was overlooked, 
every one had some present. For the Eskimo men 
there were pij^es, tobacco, matches, lead, shot, 
powder, bullets, knives, files, iron for spear heads 
and even ]3ine boards which are valued highly in 
a land where the only wood and timber are drift 
wood from old wrecks. For the Eskimo women, 
there were needles and thread, thimbles, cheap 
jewelry, beads, scissors, pins and many other 
trinkets. The whalemen had ditty-bags with but- 
tons, needles, thread, etc., jumpers and overalls, 
socks, caps, tobacco and pipes, jack-knives and 
other useful articles, while the Eskimos, not to be 
outdone and catching the spirit if not the sig- 
nificance of the day, gave their whalemen friends 
reindeer moccasins, fur coats and trousers, 
carved walrus tusks and other samples of their 
handiwork. All these were distributed by 
the big captain, garbed in his Eskimo suit of 
white bear skin and with a huge false beard of 

raveled rope yarn to make him appear still 

174 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

more like Santa Glaus. And as no Christmas 
would be complete without tlie kiddies, the 
round-faced, slant-eyed little Eskimos found 
Santa had not forgotten them, but handed them 
dolls, jumping-jacks, mouth-organs and other 
toys. 

" Then, as a fitting end of the day, long plank 
tables were spread with roast wild duck and 
goose, roast venison, ptarmigan, plum duff and 
plenty of potatoes and tinned vegetables while, 
for the special benefit of their Eskimo guests, the 
men had provided such delicacies as seals' blub- 
ber, walrus tongues, whale steak and lard which 
to an Eskimo is a far greater dainty than plum 
pudding or pumpkin pie. 

"And when at last all had dined and could eat 
no more the crew brought out a battered accor- 
dion and an old fiddle and there, with the biting 
arctic gales howling about the ice-bound ship and 
piling up mountains of snow and with the mer- 
cury in the thermometer out of sight somewhere 
around 50° below zero the rough, good-natured 
New England whalemen and the Eskimos danced 
and sang and made as merry as ever a Christmas 

gathering in old New London town. 

175 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Such was the brighter side of the whaleman's 
life and at times he showed that he was not blind 
to the finer and higher things ; that he loved ro- 
mance and was willing to throw his lot with the 
under dog. Indeed, I could relate scores of in- 
stances where the whalemen went out of their 
way to help some one or to have a hand in some 
undertaking just for the pure enjoyment of the 
adventure. One of the most romantic deeds ever 
undertaken by the whalers was the liberation of 
Fenian prisoners confined in Australia. The 
ship selected for this hair-brained and yet suc- 
cessful expedition was the l^ew Bedford whaling 
ship Catalpa and aside from those intimately con- 
nected with the true purposes of the voyage all 
thought she was fitting for an ordinary whaling 
cruise. The prime mover of the scheme was John 
W. Gofif, who afterwards became Justice of the 
Supreme Court, but the active leader was Mr. 
Thomas Brennan, who died in 'New York in No- 
vember, 1915, and was the last survivor of this 
remarkable voyage during which the old ship and 
her company underwent adventures which might 
well form the basis of a most thrilling and ro- 
mantic novel. 

176 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" The Catalpa, under Captain Anthony, cleared 
from New Bedford April 29th, 1875, and was 
not heard from until a year later, when safe and 
sound, she entered New York harbor bearing the 
six Fenians who had been sentenced to life im- 
prisonment in Australia. 

" Leaving New Bedford the ship, as usual with 
whalers, made for the Azores where she was to 
be joined by Mr. Brennan, who was also to put 
aboard a case of firearms in addition to a large 
sum of money, for he and his fellows were pre- 
pared to resort to force if milder methods failed 
and the whalemen looked forward expectantly to 
a lively time. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Bren- 
nan's ship, the Gazelle, was delayed and did not 
reach the Azores until the Catalpa had cleared 
and Mr. Brennan found that he would be com- 
pelled to go to England in order to join his ship. 
His predicament was a most serious one, for the 
only vessel leaving for England — ^the Selhourne 
— refused to take him and his companions, the 
captain claiming he thought them criminals try- 
ing to evade justice. But notwithstanding that 
Mr. Brennan was himself a political fugitive from 
England, he and his friends stowed away on 

177 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie Selbourney forsook the ship when near Liver- 
pool and were rescued in an almost drowning 
state by a chance small boat. 

" Reaching London secretly he conferred with 
friends and learned that the Gatalpa was off 
Australia awaiting the arms and Mr. Brennan's 
party. After innumerable adventures the in- 
domitable leader managed to reach Australia and 
on a secluded portion of the coast at a place 
called Rotten i^est, twenty-eight miles from 
Freemantle he at last joined the old whaling ship 
Catalpa. 

" But their real troubles and adventures had 
just commenced. They were compelled to march 
the twenty-eight miles to Freemantle, where the 
prisoners were confined, through the bush, and 
after rescuing the Fenians from prison retrace 
their way to the coast. It was a daring, recldess, 
apparently impossible undertaking and no fiction 
ever written could equal the exciting incidents, 
the narrow escapes and the adventures actually 
encountered on that Quixotic trip. But despite 
all, the prisoners and their rescuers at last were 
safely aboard the whale ship. Then, scarcely was 

the Catalpa under way before she was chased by 

178 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

a ship, tlie Georgette, manned by tlie British, au- 
thorities and equipped with artillery. 

" The old Catalpu was a mere snail compared 
to the speedy Georgette and was soon overhauled 
and commanded to surrender by the British, but 
those on the Georgette did not know the New 
England whalemen's characters and instead of 
heaving to and surrendering Captain Anthony 
coolly pointed to the American flag flying from 
his gaff and politely invited the British to * fire 
away.' 

" Had the pursuers accepted his invitation the 
story of the Catalpa might have been a very dif- 
ferent one, but the British commander seemed 
rather doubtful about the advisability of firing 
on an American ship and bringing on interna- 
tional complications for the sake of six Fenian 
jjrisoners and finally deciding the whalemen had 
the trump cards he reluctantly shifted his helm 
and put back, leaving the dingy old whaler to go 
wallowing on her way towards the distant United 
States and freedom. 

" Of course it was pure bluff on the part of 
Captain Anthony, for the Catalpa caught red- 
handed was little more than a pirate and the 

179 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

British, authorities were wholly within their 
rights, no matter what public sympathy might 
say, but on many an occasion that same * Yankee 
bluff ' won the day when the whalemen were in a 
tight place. 

"For years after the war of 1812, during 
which the whaling industry suffered tremendous 
losses there was always hard feeling between the 
Yankees and the Britishers whenever they met. 
Once, so the traditions in whaling circles say, 
an overbearing British offl.cer and a ISTew Bedford 
whaling captain had a heated argmnent and as 
words led to words and insult to insult the En- 
glishman finally demanded satisfaction and 
challenged the weather-beaten old skipper to a 
duel. Being the challenged party, the whale- 
man had the choice of weapons whereupon he 
promptly announced '- Harpoons at ten paces ' 
and the discomfited British officer promptly 
apologized and withdrew his challenge. 

"Later, during the Civil War, the whalemen 
also suffered severely, for their slow and unarmed 
ships fell easy victims to the Confederate cruis- 
ers and privateers. The famous Shenandoah in 

particular wrougbt havoc among the whaling 

180 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

fleet and as a usual thing the whalemen, to save 
their lives, surrendered without other resistance 
than cursing the ' Kebs ' vociferously and flu- 
ently. 

" But now and then the Confederate ofS-cers 
caught a tartar, as in the case of Captain Thomas 
G. Young of the Fairhaven bark Favorite. The 
Shenandoah had been cruising in the E^orth Pa- 
cific, destroying whaling vessels right and left 
and having her own way, when, after sinking five 
ships in Behring Straits she came upon a fleet 
of whalers aiding the Brunswick which had been 
crushed in the ice. At sight of the Confederate 
privateer the whalemen were panic stricken and 
were ready to surrender, but not so old Skipper 
Young. Loading every firearm aboard, charg- 
ing his darting guns and bomb lances and placing 
irons, lances and spades within reach the old fel- 
low prepared to resist to the end and standing on 
his cabin roof shook his fist at the rebels and 
defied them to do their worst. As the Confeder- 
ates sent a boat to board the Favorite the 
bronzed-faced New Englander looked so fierce 
and determined that the boarding ofdcer realiz- 
ing it was no mere bluff very wisely turned about 

181 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

and retreated to liis ship. Realizing they had 
a new type of Yankee skipper to deal with, the 
captain of the Shenandoah trained a gun on the 
Favorite and sent a shot crashing through the 
bark's hull. But even this warning of the hope- 
lessness of resisting failed to make the whaleman 
quail. Instead, he grew more defiant, cursed the 
Confederates as a pack of blackguards, thieves, 
pirates and cowards and when his own officers, — 
realizing their position — remonstrated with him, 
he replied with a fervid oath that he would die 
happy if he could only shoot Waddell, the Shen- 
andoah's commander. 

" Thinking their skipper had gone stark mad 
the mates secretly removed the caps and charges 
from the firearms and to save themselves took 
to the boats, leaving the savage old skipper alone 
upon the cabin of the Favorite. Not wishing to 
destroy him in cold blood, Captain Waddell 
thereupon sent a boat in charge of an officer to 
the whale ship with orders to make Captain 
Young a prisoner and to haul down his flag which 
still flaunted defiantly at the mast. The instant 
the Confederate set foot on deck Captain Young 

seized a musket, aimed at the enemy and pulled 

182 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

the trigger and then, finding the weapon useless, 
cast it aside and leaped upon the officer with 
clenched fists. 

" To protect himself, the Confederate drew his 
pistol and threatened to shoot, but even this 
could not check the whaleman, who rushed at the 
other crying, ' Shoot and be damned.' At this 
instant, however, the armed men from the Shen- 
andoaWs boat had gained the deck and piling 
upon the whaleman overpowered him and made 
him a prisoner. 

" One would have thought that the gallant and 
heroic whaleman would have won the respect and 
admiration of even the Confederates and that he 
would have been treated as he deserved, but to 
the disgrace and shame of the rebels. Captain 
Waddell ordered the brave old skipper placed in 
irons, he took possession of all the whaleman's 
private and personal property and treated him 
in a more brutal and inhumane manner than if 
he had been a common malefactor or convict." 



183 



CHAPTER IX 

""1 TTE were reading a magazine last night 
^ * and it said something about ambergris," 
said Rob, when the boys reached the museum. 
" In the story the hero found a lump of the stuff 
and sold it for a fortune. Can you tell us what 
ambergris is and if it really is valuable? " 

"And the story spoke of killing whales with 
guns and steamers," put in Harry. " I've heard 
of steam whalers and you have spoken of ' bomb- 
lances,' but we'd like to know more about such 
things, even if they're not as interesting and ex- 
citing as the old-time whalers." 

" Very well," smiled the good-natured curator, 
" I'll try to answer your questions and tell you 
all I can about the modern steam whalers and 
their methods, but I'm afraid it's not very much. 
Steam whaling is such a matter-of-fact, business 
proposition that there is little of romance, ad- 
venture or danger in it, and it never appealed to 
me. But to answer your first questions about 
ambergris. 

184 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

^'Ambergris is a most peculiar substance, and 
for a great many years its origin was a mystery. 
Sometimes it was found floating upon the sea; 
at other times cast upon beaches, and occasion- 
ally it was discovered within the bodies of 
whales. But as bits of cuttlefish beaks were 
sometimes found in it, and as scientists learned 
that sperm whales fed upon these creatures, they 
deduced that there was a very close connection 
between the origin of the ambergris and the food 
of the sperm whales. Finally it was discovered 
that the ambergris is a disease growth caused by 
an accumulation of indigestible portions of cut- 
tlefish or squids which lodge in the whale's in- 
testines, and some of the largest masses of the 
substance ever taken have been secured by dis- 
secting the whales. In appearance it is gray- 
ish, greasy and porous — looking a good deal like 
old water-soaked bread, — and as it is very light 
it floats upon the surface of the sea. It has a 
peculiar, rather sickish, odor and its value lies in 
the fact that it possesses the remarkable quality 
of holding, or absorbing, odors. Owing to this, 
it is largely used in manufacturing perfumes, 

while in China it is used as medicine. It is 

186 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

worth, considerably more than its weight In gold, 
but is not as valuable as many suppose and as 
stories would have us believe. At times it has 
been sold for as much, as one thousand dollars a 
pound, although its average value is from three 
to five hundred dollars; but as ambergris is so 
light it takes a large lump to weigh, a pound. 
Nevertheless, many a poor sailor and whaleman 
has made a moderate fortune by finding a mass 
of ambergris, and not infrequently the ambergris 
brought back by a whaling ship has been worth 
more than the entire cargo of oil. 

" I cannot say what the largest mass of amber- 
gris ever found weighed, but I have a report here 
of all the ambergris secured by whaling vessels 
for a period of seventy-three years — from 1841 
until 1914. According to this the largest quan- 
tity brought in by any one ship was 983 pounds 
by the bark Splendid, of N'ew Zealand, in 1883. 
The next largest find was 800 pounds brought in 
by the schooner Watchman, of Nantucket, in 
1858. Following this are lots weighing 214 
pounds from the schooner Antarctic, of Prov- 
incetown, in 1887 ; 208 pounds by the bark Elisa- 
beth, of Westport, in 1870, and 200 pounds from 

186 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

tlie Azores in 1910. There are several more rec- 
ords of over 100 pounds, but most of tlie lots 
weighed only ten or twelve pounds, the smallest 
amount being three pounds found by the bark 
Morning Star, of ISTew Bedford, in 1906. The 
grand total of all amounts to 4,388 pounds, or 
about sixty pounds a year, the total value prob- 
ably being about two million dollars, — a goodly 
sum to be sure, but when distributed over seven- 
ty-three years, hardly enough to tempt any one 
to go ambergris hunting. 

"And now about the steam-whaling industry. 
As I mentioned before, the old New England 
whalers seldom attacked the gray whales, fin- 
backs, and sulphur-bottom whales. This was 
partly due to the fact that these yielded com- 
paratively little oil, while their whalebone was 
small and of poor quality. But another reason 
was that these whales were very difficult to se- 
cure by the old-time methods. They are among 
the largest of whales, are extremely quick in 
their movements and are powerful swimmers. 
Moreover, they are shy and wary and always on 
the alert and are dangerous beyond all other 
whales when struck. 

187 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Last, but by no means least, they usually sink 
when killed. But with the invention of harpoon 
or ' darting ' guns, bomb-lances and steam-whal- 
ing apparatus the hunting of these whales devel- 
oped into a large industry which is carried on 
extensively in Japan, in Scandinavia and on the 
northwestern coast of the United States. The 
whales are followed by steamers and are struck 
with darting- guns and killed with bombs and the 
bodies are kej)t from sinking by forcing com- 
pressed air into them. After a number are 
taken, they are towed to shore by the steamers, 
are skidded or hauled by steam up runways to 
the factories and practically every portion of 
them is utilized. Their blubber is boiled for its 
oil, the livers and other parts also give oil, the 
hides are used for leather, the bones are ground 
and the flesh dried and pulverized for fertilizers, 
or, within recent years, has been butchered and 
sold in the markets as whale steak. There was a 
large demand for this meat during the war, espe- 
cially in the Boston markets, and it really is ex- 
cellent eating. When we consider that whales 
are warm-blooded mammals there is no reason 

why whale meat should not be good, for, con- 

188 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

trary to popular ideas, it is neither greasy nor 
oily and does not taste the least ^ fishy.' The 
whale's oil or fat is all on the outside of the flesh, 
just as the thick white fat of a hog is between 
the flesh and the skin, and a whale's meat is not 
nearly as greasy as that of a hog. In color it is 
rich, dark red and in flavor it is slightly like veal, 
or perhaps more like venison. 

" Oddly enough, human beings, and especially 
civilized men, have very strange and absolutely 
unreasonable prejudices in regard to certain 
foods, and it is this unaccountable prejudice 
against eating whales which hitherto has pre- 
vented their flesh from being marketed, with the 
result that countless tons of the most wholesome, 
tender and well-flavored meat has been thrown 
away or converted into fertilizer. 

" The harpoon-guns, or darting-guns, as whale- 
men call them, consist of a gun-like arrangement 
loaded with powder and which fires a harpoon or 
iron to which a line is attached. There are a 
great many kinds of these in use and many of the 
^ew England whalemen use them at times. 
Some are designed to be fired from the shoulder, 

like real guns, while others are swiveled at the 

189 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

bow of the boat on rigid stands or supports. 
Those used by the steam whalers are usually 
heavy, cannon-like weapons weighing hundreds 
of pounds and capable of striking a whale far out 
of range of the old hand-thrown irons. 

" The Yankee whalemen also adopted bomb- 
lances in the later years of the industry, not only 
because it decreased the danger to men and boats 
when killing a whale, but also because it made 
the death of the whale both quicker and more 
certain. There were a number of kinds of bomb- 
lances made and invented, but those commonly 
in use by the New England whalemen were a 
combination of harpoon and lance. This weapon 
consisted of an iron or harpoon of the ordinary 
pattern attached to a pole while fitted beside it 
was a gun-like arrangement containing a heavy 
brass dart tipped with a steel head and fired by 
a projecting rod which pulled the trigger when 
driven back. When the iron is thrown at the 
whale and penetrates his body far enough to be 
well fast, the rod comes in contact with the crea- 
ture's skin, thus firing the gun and driving the 
heavy dart into his vitals. After this is done, 

the whalemen have only to wait until the whale 

190 



TEDS BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

spouts blood, thus avoiding all danger of going 
in to kill him by the hand-lance. The bomb- 
lances used by the steam whalers in killing the 
finbacks are very different. These are guns or 
cannon which fire an explosive shell or bomb 
which bursts after it enters the whale's body. 
Compared with the old New England whalemen's 
methods such steam whaling must be very unro- 
mantic and uninteresting and mere slaughter. 
It bears just about the same relationship to ' go- 
ing on ' a whale in a frail rowboat, striking him 
with a hand iron, fighting him until he is tired 
out and then killing him with a hand-lance, as 
stalking and Idlling a grizzly bear with a knife 
has to sticking pigs in a slaughter-house. 

" Nowadays, however, man seeks money rather 
than romance or adventure, and the steam whal- 
ing companies make more profits without risk to 
life, limb or ships than the old-time whalemen 
ever dreamed of. Just as the stately old clipper 
ships gave way to floating palaces of steel and 
steam; just as the long-bow was laid aside in 
favor of firearms; just as the stage-coach was 
superseded by the railway train and the family 

* buggy ' by the omnipresent Ford, so the staunch 

191 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

old barks, sliips and brigs of New England have 
yielded tlieir place to the steam whaler. The 
brave-hearted, indomitable, deep-water Yankee 
skippers have been replaced by captains who 
could not tell a mainyard from a spanker boom. 
The roar of a steam whistle is heard where once 
full-throated sailors sung their chanteys and in- 
stead of straining spars and lofty pyramids of 
sail are throbbing engines and churning screws. 
" Before long the last old Yankee whale ship 
will be but a memory of the past and the last 
Yankee whalemen will have been laid to rest. 
We should be thankful that, for a time, the whal- 
ing industry of New England has been revived; 
that once more, for a space, the dingy, smoke- 
stained sails of the old ships again dot the ocean, 
that once again crossed yards and wide-spread 
shrouds rise above New Bedford's water-front 
and that the war has granted a brief respite to 
our whale ships and our whalemen." 



192 



CHAPTER X 

" T TOW large were tlie biggest whales?" asked 
•*- -■■ Harry when the curator ceased speaking. 
" When you were telling us stories of whalemen's 
adventures you spoke of an eighty-five foot whale 
and you mentioned a fifty-foot whale as a mere 
baby, and in the logs we saw pictures of sixty- 
barrel and seventy-five-barrel whales." 

" It's a hard question to answer," replied the 
curator. " The whalemen kept records of the 
number of barrels of oil obtained from the whales 
they killed, but they seldom bothered to note the 
length of the creatures. But in some of the log- 
books and journals the sizes of whales were re- 
corded, and by comparing the quantity of oil ob- 
tained from these with the amounts obtained 
from others, it is possible to estimate very nearly 
the size of all whales recorded, and especially of 
the largest ones. Let me see, here in this log- 
book, we have two instances of one-hundred-bar- 
rel whales being taken. Here is another entry 

193 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEKS 

of a whale which, yielded one hundred and ten 
barrels, and we could find scores of others where 
the whales taken yielded from seventy to ninety 
barrels each. The largest whale whose measure- 
ments I have ever seen entered in a log was a 
sperm whale which the record says was ninety 
feet in length, with jaws eighteen feet long and 
flukes eighteen feet across. Moreover, the quan- 
tity of oil taken from this monster is also re- 
corded — one hundred and three barrels. An- 
other log gives the measurements of one whale 
taken as seventy-nine feet long, jaws sixteen feet 
long and flukes sixteen feet and six inches across. 
This whale gave more than the ninety-foot fel- 
low, the yield being one hundred and seven bar- 
rels. From these two entries, which are no 
doubt accurate and reliable, I think you can as- 
sume that, to yield one hundred barrels of oil or 
more, a whale must be about eighty feet in length, 
and as the proportion of flukes and jaws to the 
length of the whale is so close in both the in- 
stances I have mentioned, we can conclude that 
the average whale has flukes about as wide as 
the jaws are long and that a whale's body is 
about four times as long as its jaws. 

194: 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" Many of the whalemen were in tlie habit of 
bringing borne tbe jaws of big wbales as souve- 
nirs or curios, often using tbem as arcbways over 
tbe gates to their front gardens, and I know of 
many jaws still to be found about New Bedford 
and Nantucket which are sixteen to eighteen feet 
in length and a short time ago a whale's jaw was 
offered to the museum which measured twenty- 
two feet in length. If we can go by the propor- 
tions of the whales recorded in the logs, the 
owner of these jaws must have been at least one 
hundred and ten feet long — a perfect giant of the 
seas. 

"But this was by no means the biggest of 
whales known, for in a show-case here we have 
two sperm whales' teeth which are so enormous 
that teeth which we know came from an eighty- 
foot whale appear ridiculously small, and, judg- 
ing from their size, I should say they came from 
a whale that certainly must have measured one 
hundred and fifteen feet in length. I doubt very 
much if whales ever were taken much larger than 
this, or at least sperm whales, for I do not know 
of any records of over one hundred and twenty 

barrels being taken from any one whale. On 

195 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

the other hand, that is not conclusive proof, for 
the huge whales were very old, — probably well 
over one hundred years, — and they were often 
poor and thin and yielded less oil in proportion 
to their size than the younger and fatter ones, so 
that the one-hundred-and-twenty-barrel whale 
may have been over one hundred and twenty feet 
long. 

" Moreover, we have very little data to guide 
us in estimating the size of the largest right 
whales, while the gray whales of the Pacific, 
which the Yankee whalemen did not hunt, grew 
to greater size than either the sperm or right 
whales. 

"About all that any one can state with cer- 
tainty is that in the old whaling days sperm 
whales seventy-five to one hundred feet long were 
not uncommon, and unless larger than that they 
excited no comment. 

" To-day, on the other hand, a sixty-foot sperm 

whale is unusual, and the average yield from 

sperm whales now taken is about forty barrels 

each, and while sixty and even seventy barrel 

whales are occasionally captured, a great many 

are killed which do not yield over ten or twenty 

196 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

barrels, which indicates whales hardly bigger 
than a full-grown grampus. 

"And, speaking of the size of whales, it is in- 
teresting to know that the size and abundance of 
whales had little if anything to do with the fall- 
ing off of the old whaling industry. Many peo- 
ple think that the whaling business was largely 
abandoned because the whales were ^ fished out,' 
so to speak, and that so few whales were left in 
the oceans that it did not pay to go after them. 

" This is a great mistake. Although the whales 
run smaller than in the old days, owing to the 
ancient giants having been killed off, yet the 
whales as a whole are more numerous and are 
found nearer to our ports than in the times when 
whale was king in New England. Moreover, the 
few schooners, barks and brigs that still kept up 
the industry before the world war took more 
whales and more oil in short cruises than the old- 
time ships secured in a cruise of several years. 
Up to December, 1823, the largest catch of oil 
taken on a three years' cruise was 2,600 barrels, 
while in 1830 the Sarah, of Nantucket, brought 
in 3,497 barrels. In 1850 the Coral returned 

from a three years' voyage with 3,500 barrels, 

197 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

while, in 1911, tlie Sullivan obtained 1,500 bar- 
rels in eleven weeks, and in 1915 the Cameo en- 
tered New Bedford after a tliree years' cruise 
with a cargo of 4,000 barrels, or over 600 barrels 
more than was ever obtained on a three years' 
voyage by any of the old whalemen in the zenith 
of the whaling days. 

" Such figures absolutely disprove all state- 
ments that whales to-day are scarce or that ships 
must cruise long distances to find them. The 
real reason for the decline of the whaling indus- 
try was the drop in the prices of whalebone, 
whale oil, spermaceti and sperm oil, combined 
with the rise in cost of fitting out, of labor and 
of ships, while the introduction of steam whal- 
ing ships, darting-guns, shore plants, where the 
blubber was tried out and the offal converted 
into fertilizers, had practically forced the sailing- 
ships and Yankee whalemen from the seas until 
the war broke out. 

" To illustrate this, let us take the catches I 
have already mentioned. The 2,600 barrel cargo 
of 1823 was worth |65,000. The cargo of 3,497 
barrels brought in by the Sa/rah was valued at 

189,000, and the CoraVs 3,350 barrels brought 

198 




THE REASON FOR THE DECLINE OF THE WHALING INDUSTRY 
WAS THE DROP IN PRICES OF WHALEBONE AND WHALE OIL 




THEY HAD BEEN THROUGH THREE WINTERS IN THE ARCTIC 
TO SECURE THE FULL CARGO OF OIL 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

$126,630. But the Cameo's 4,000 barrels, on tlie 
other hand, were worth only |50,000, or less than 
one-half the value of the cargo of the Coral. 
From this you can see that if all other things 
were equal, the modern whaleman, previous to 
the war, would have to take 10,000 barrels of oil 
on a three years' cruise in order to make the 
profits which accrued from a successful voyage 
in 1850. But even if we assume that it were 
possible to make such a catch — and it is not — 
the prices of ships, labor, provisions, supplies 
and outfit are so much greater to-day than in 
1850 that the whaleman's profits from his stu- 
pendous catch would be less than he could make 
at any other calling of the sea. 

" For example, the average cost of outfitting a 
whale ship for a two years' cruise in 1790 was 
only 112,000. In 1858 it was |65,000, and in 
1915 it was 1150,000. It was owing to such 
things that the whaling industry of New En- 
gland went rapidly to pieces after the discovery 
and general use of petrolemn, the substitution of 
parafiine and stearine for spermaceti and of arti- 
ficial bone for whalebone. The whaling business 

reached its high-water mark in 1850, when New 

199 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

Bedford and Fairhaven had 314 vessels and 
nearly 10,000 men devoted to whaling and its 
fleet each season brought 10,636 barrels of sperm, 
oil, 86,451 barrels of whale oU and 602,100 pounds 
of whalebone into port. By 1881 the entire 
whaling fleet of the United States consisted of 
only 171 vessels, and out of these 123 had New 
Bedford painted on their counters as their home 
port. 

"And yet the annual catch of this tiny rem- 
nant of the old whaling fleet was larger in pro- 
portion than ever before. In 1881, 37,614 bar- 
rels of sperm oil, 34,626 barrels of whale oil and 
458,400 pounds of whalebone were brought in, 
while in 1915, all that was brought in to ]Srew 
Bedford was 10,000 barrels of sperm oil, while 
not a pound of bone nor a barrel of right whale 
oil has entered the port for many years past. 

"From 1850 until 1870 the visitor to New 
Bedford, to Stonington, to New London, or to 
any one of a score of New England ports could 
see a forest of masts, a maze of rigging, a laby- 
rinth of spars above the docks where whale ships 
came and went. Looking across the street here, 

at Merrill's wharf, you could have seen scores of 

200 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

great barks, ships and brigs, a mountain of oil 
barrels and an army of men; but by 1915 one 
would have been obliged to search far and wide 
to find a square-rigged whale ship in a New En- 
gland port, and beside old Merrill's wharf a few 
small Portuguese schooners marked the last of 
the New Bedford whaling fleet. 

" But with the advent of the European war 
the price of oil once more went up by leaps and 
bounds. Once again the shipyards, docks and 
wharves of the old New England whaling ports 
resounded with the sound of axes, mauls and 
hammers, of creaking drays and groaning trucks, 
of squealing winches and of shouts of busy men. 
From berths on mud flats and at decaying piers, 
old, half-forgotten hulks were brought forth, 
overhauled and refitted. Once more came the 
call for men to go a-whaling, and again, above 
Merill's wharf and the water-front of many a 
New England port the heavy masts and long 
cross yards of stout old whaling ships rose 
against the sky. Defying wind and weather, 
laughing at the perils of the sea and of the chase, 
and scorning lurking submarines, the veteran 

Yankee whalemen once more stood upon their 

201 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

quarter-decks and sailed their grand old ships 
upon the seven seas. 

" From far and near they sought their cargoes, 
chasing the sperm whales in the two great 
oceans, visiting the desolate South Shetlands and 
Croisettes for sea elephants, pushing their way 
into frozen seas, and once more the Stars and 
Stripes flung forth its folds from the mastheads 
of many a staunch old whale ship. 

"But while the price of oil rose to heights 
never dreamed of in all the years of whaling, 
still, it was not a profitable business, and com- 
paratively few ships set forth. Food, material, 
labor and the thousand and one things essential 
to the whaling business had also reached un- 
heard-of heights in price, and despite the big 
catches made, the whalemen found it hard to 
make both ends meet, and in a few years the old 
ships once more will be abandoned and the little 
schooners and their Portuguese crews will be the 
only whalers left to keep alive the memory of 
New England's old-time fame as the head of the 
whaling industry. 

" In a few more years all the old square-rig- 
gers will be again out of commission, — laid up 

202 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

in quiet, out-of-the-way slips or resting immov- 
ably upon the mud flats of the ports they served 
so long and well, for seldom is a whale ship 
junked, — somehow the owners and the old skip- 
pers have a sentimental feeling about their ships 
and hate to see them destroyed. To them, they 
are almost like fellow beings, — ^like the gnarled 
and Imotted old seamen that sailed them, — ^and 
they like to feel that the ships which bore them 
so staunchly and safely around the world and 
back so many times are resting peacefully in 
their old age, content to gaze thoughtfully upon 
the familiar scenes of their home ports and 
happy in memories of glorious deeds of long ago. 
And we can scarcely blame the old whalemen for 
looking upon their ships as almost human. 
What marvelous stories they could tell if they 
could speak! What adventures have they not 
gone through ! What storms and seas have they 
not withstood! For scores of years their keels 
knew the wide oceans and the far-flung seas. 
Through the ice-floes of the Arctic and the tepid 
waters of the tropics their bluff bows have 
pushed their way. Hard as steel have their 

dingy sails been frozen by sleet-ladened gales as 

203 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

they rounded Cape Horn and their frayed rig- 
ging has oft been coated with gleaming ice in 
Kamschatkan seas. Far above their lofty mast- 
heads have loomed the pinnacles of stupendous 
bergs and about their cut-waters have frolicked 
the rainbow-hued fish of coral-bound lagoons. 
Under the fir-clad hills of Vancouver they have 
swung to their anchors and they have moored 
'neath the shelter of waving palms. Their 
grease-soaked decks have felt the patter of naked 
feet of South Sea cannibals and over their high 
sides have clambered skin-clad Eskimos. Their 
scuppers have run red with the blood of men in 
mortal combat or treacherously slain by muti- 
neers. They have rung to the merry laughter 
and rollicking songs of the brave whalemen and 
to the wild yells of savages and the screams of 
tortured men. 

"And what of the men who manned and sailed 
these ships, — ships such as never again will be 
built? Like their ships, they, too, are * out of 
commission,' — pushed aside by the march of 
progress and civilization, all but forgotten by the 
people and the nation which owes them so much. 

"In many a song and story we honor our 

204: 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

pioneers of land ; we erect handsome monuments 
and carve lasting memorials to soldier and sailor 
heroes ; but only in one spot — in little New Bed- 
ford — ^will you find a monument to the whale- 
men. And yet no deeds were ever more worthy 
of praise than theirs; no braver acts were ever 
performed by sailor or soldier; no greater aid 
was ever given to the struggling States than the 
prosperity brought by the Yankee whalemen. 

" They blazed the pathway for civilization and 
Christianity to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
They mapped uncharted seas and opened trade 
routes to commerce. They were the first to look 
upon many an unknown land, and when their 
country called to arms they were ever the first to 
respond. The five oceans and the seven seas 
were their haunts; in the tropics of the polar 
regions they were equally at home, but ever their 
hearts were true to the New England hills and 
the land whose Stars and Stripes flew at their 
mastheads. 

" But while whaling and the New England 

whalemen may soon be a thing of the past yet 

their story, their deeds, their bravery, their skill, 

even their ships and gear will live on forever and 

205 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALEES 

will be seen and wondered at by generations to 
come. Recently a group of wealthy New En- 
gland men whose ancestors bad been identified 
with, the whaling industry decided to perpetuate 
the old time whalemen and their ships in such 
a way that long after the last New England 
whaleman is dead and the last staunch old 
whale ship has rotted to pieces and has gone, the 
public can visualize the life, the chase, the dan- 
gers, the courage and the adventures of the old- 
time whalemen. A few books had been written 
on the subject, many paintings and photographs 
had been made, but books do not last forever and 
never reach more than a small portion of the 
world, so in order to make the story of the whaler 
more widely known and to make the life of 
the whalemen more realistic, it was decided to 
have a motion picture made of a whaling voyage. 
Not just a few short scenes of various events, but 
a consecutive, thrilling story, a story filled with 
romance, adventure and suspense; a story with 
a well-defined plot which would interest anyone 
and yet a story which would portray every de- 
tail of a whaling voyage from the time the ship 

was fi^tted out until it again sailed into port 

206 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

weather-beaten, buffeted, but with a full cargo 
of oil. 

" To be sure that the tale might be absolutely 
accurate, all the old records of New Bedford, 
Nantucket and other famous old whaling ports 
were searched, the logs and journals and the col- 
lections in the museum here were studied, old 
whalemen were consulted and the story written. 
Then came the question of ships. No modern 
schooner, no up-to-date steam whaler, no bomb 
lances or darting guns would serve. The story 
and the film must depict only the real old-time 
ship and the old hand methods. Luckily the 
ships were available and fortunately, too, there 
were still enough old-time whalemen left to man 
ships and boats and go a-whaling as in the good 
old dayg. As a most fitting beginning the open- 
ing scenes were taken on the oldest whaling 
vessel in existence — the bark Chas, W. Morgan, 
built in 1841. For years the old hulk had lain 
upon the mud flats across the harbor at Fair- 
haven, deserted, abandoned and almost forgotten 
with grass and weeds growing from her seams 
and upon her decks. Then, in 1915, with the rise 

of on due to the war the staunch old ship was 

207 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

dragged from lier long resting place, she was 
caulked, repaired, refitted, and fully manned 
sailed forth from i^ew Bedford as though risen 
from the grave. No one who saw her would have 
ever guessed that the trim, freshly painted ship 
with her long yards, her taut rigging, her great 
white sails and her fluttering flags which rode 
so majestically at anchor in the bay was the 
same dilapidated old wreck which had been a 
landmark of Fairhaven's water-front for years. 
But as I have already told you, whale ships in the 
old days were built to last forever and outward 
from New Bedford's harbor the rejuvenated 
Morgan sailed to breast the long swells of the 
Atlantic, to swelter under the equatorial sun of 
the doldrums, to battle under reefed topsails 
with the storm-lashed Antarctic, for the Mor- 
gmv's destination was the South Shetland Is- 
lands where she was to hunt sea elephants. And 
as bravely as ever the old ship held her own. 
Through storm and calm she bore steadily south- 
ward; she reached the bleak and God-forsaken 
isles close to the South Pole and safely back she 
came to her home port with her catch of oil and 

a goodly quantity of ambergris besides. 

208 



THE BOYS' BOOK OF WHALERS 

" So, upon the Morgan's decks the first pic- 
tures were taken and then another ship, — indis- 
tinguishable and second only to the Morgan in 
point of age and fame — the Gaspe — ^was fitted 
for the cruise. Manned by old-tiine whalemen, 
equipped to the last detail exactly as she had 
been years ago, the Gaspe sailed for the sperm- 
whale grounds of the tropical Atlantic, while 
upon her were the motion-picture men with their 
cameras. Somewhere in the Caribbean or on the 
Atlantic between Africa and the West Indies the 
Gaspe is cruising for ' sparm,' her boats are being 
lowered, her men are pulling the long ash oars in 
pursuit of the monsters of the sea, her boat-steer- 
ers are heaving the heavy irons as their ancestors 
did generations ago; her mates are risking life 
and limb and instant death is standing ever at 
their elbows as they creep in and shove home the 
lance. Again the cry of 'fin up ' is ringing 
over the Atlantic; again the black sooty smoke 
from the try-works is rising from the deck of a 
New Bedford whale ship beneath the blue tropic 
sky. Once more the great blanket-pieces are be- 
ing stripped from the whale, the huge jaw is be- 
ing hoisted aboard and the spermaceti is being 

209 



THE BOYS^ BOOK OF WHALERS 

baled from the case. And between whiles, as of 
old, the men are skylarking on deck, they are 
scrimshawing teeth, carving curios from bone, 
dancing in the moonlight to the music of a mouth 
organ and a battered accordion. All is being re- 
corded, all is being pictured and made perma- 
nent, ifothing is missing save the brutality and 
the abuses, the cruelty and the oaths and, per- 
haps, to make the scenes even more realistic, a 
bit of these will be staged as well." 



210 



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